5 Website Layout Mistakes Your Dream Clients Skip Past (and How to Fix ’Em)
If there’s one thing I know, it’s what works in website design. I can almost guarantee you that the reason your dream clients are ghosting you isn’t because your work isn’t good enough.
They’re skipping over your website because they’re confused, bamboozled, or just plain underwhelmed. They came in search of the magic. The personality. The “hell yes, I need this gal in my corner” moment. Instead they got lost in a maze of mystery buttons, beige design, and a homepage that has no idea what it wants to say.
But don’t panic. I’m not here to judge you for it, this stuff is hard. I’m here to help you wrangle your web page layouts into shape so they actually work for you.
Web Page Layout Mistake #1: No Clear Path to Book or Buy
You’ve got kick-ass services that meet the needs of your audience. You’ve got heaps of expertise in delivering those services. You’ve got passion for your industry pouring out of your every pore.
But if your website doesn’t clearly show people exactly what they need to do next, they’re not going to figure it out for you. These things may seem obvious to you, but expecting people who’ve never visited your website before to just ‘figure it out’ is way too much like hard work for the average user.
Buttons like “Learn More” or “Let’s Connect” don’t cut it anymore. Your dream client doesn’t have time to play detective with your website content. You need to give them an obvious, easy next step.
You can do this by assigning each page of your website one clear call to action. For example, your About Me page could focus solely on getting people to book a free discovery call, while your Home page could focus on driving traffic to your reviews and case studies.
Once you’ve decided on the primary CTA for each page, you need to make sure every call-to-action is crystal clear and easy to spot. “Book a free consultation”, “Explore my services”, or “Download the free guide”; lead users to the next stage like the confident business sherpa you are. Repeat your CTA frequently throughout the page, not just once at the bottom for ultimate clarity and ease of use.
Web Page Layout Mistake #2: It’s Giving Beige (aka your Personality got lost in the post)
You know when a website just… blends in? Like white rice on a white plate on a white tablecloth. Like, what is there to even look at, here?
Your dream clients are not looking for all that nothingness. They want flavour, spice, a reason to remember you. You need to give them a decent helping of your amazing and unique personality if you’re gonna hook them in for more than half a second.
If your site feels generic, cookie cutter, or like it could belong to literally anyone on the internet, it’s time to inject your bold, unapologetic personality into it.
In order to build a strong visual brand, pick 2–3 strong brand colours and use them consistently. This is easy to update if you use an easy to use website builder like Squarespace.
Remember to choose fonts that reflect your vibe (soft and soulful? Mysterious and witchy?) and make sure when you’re browsing that you don’t fall in love with a font that doesn’t support website options. Google Fonts is a great place to look, and Squarespace has hundreds of amazing fonts to choose from for when you need an extra dose of personality.
Use imagery that tells your story. Show your face on your website, include images of your workspace, or of you giving a talk at a recent event, or of your client results. Don’t rely too heavily on stock imagery - no matter how unique you think your choices are - as they lack character and are tough to connect with.
And for the love of all things design, please stop using Canva templates straight off the shelf without tweaking them to reflect your brand vibe.
Web Page Layout Mistake #3: Your Navigation is a Hot Mess
Your main navigation menu is not the place to get cute and quippy. If it takes more than 2 seconds to find details of your services or contact info, people will bounce faster than you can say ‘Howdy Partner’.
Your dream clients don’t want to decode poetic page titles like “The Magic” or “My World.” They want to know exactly what you do, who you do it for, and how they can get it for themselves.
Keep your navigation clean and simple: Home / About Us / Services / Blog / Contact are a great place to start. Add dropdowns if you have multiple offers, and keep them clean and well organised. Make sure every crucial page is only 1 or 2 clicks away from the homepage, no one wants to spend precious time rooting through your maze of vaguely named pages.
Remember, personality is crucial, but there’s a time and a place to be showing it off. Purely informational zones like your navigation, buttons and page titles are not the place for this. Keep it simple, sister.
Web Page Layout Mistake #4: Your pages are impossible to use on mobile devices
You DIY-ed your entire website, checked through each page once on your laptop and thought “yup, that looks good to me!”. Show of hands who’s guilty of this?
Believe it or not, around 60% of your audience is accessing your website on their phones, and if your mobile site is cramped, broken, or slow, you’ve lost them! Common issues on mobile devices can include unclickable or covered up buttons, messy navigation, or impossibly slow load times, and you’ll likely know from being a browser that these frustrating issues are more than enough to send you running for the hills.
You can fix these common issues by making sure to test your site regularly on your own phone. Scroll through every page like you’re a first-time visitor, click every link, assess how easy and clear your pages are to use.
Is it easy to read? Do the buttons work? Can you tap the menu without fat-fingering everything? Prioritise a mobile-first design that feels just as good on the go. Thankfully, Squarespace makes this super simple with their built in mobile preview mode (but I still recommend testing on actual devices as well!)
Web Page Layout Mistake #5: No Clear Visual Hierarchy = layout chaos
Everything on your page is screaming at your visitors all at the same volume. That big block of introductory text? It’s the same size as the headline! Call to action? Teeny tiny and lost somewhere near the footer.
There’s no clear signals for your users on what they should look at first, or next, or last. They’re trying to scan the page for the important details, but with no visual hierarchy everything just looks identical and impossible to distinguish. Once your dream customers have reached the confusion stage, they’ll be quick to bail and find an alternative website that makes their offers clearer.
You can avoid stressing out potential buyers by making good use of headings, subheadings, bold text, and spacing to guide their eyeballs through your content. Your headings should be a good bit larger than your body copy text so that the hierarchy is clear.
Make your most important message the loudest one (visually). Use contrasting colours, place it near the top of the page and don’t shy away from larger text sizes to really get the message across.
Think of your layout like a smouldering campfire, it should pull people in with it’s warm and cosy energy, not confuse the f**k out of them and send them wandering off to a different campsite.
Your website layout isn’t just about decoration, it should give clear direction. It should guide your dream clients straight to the “hell yes” moment, without detours, dead ends, or design disasters.
So if you’ve spotted yourself in any of these mistakes? Don’t stress. You’ve already done the hard part by building the business. Now it’s time to give that business the website it deserves.
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