the web design mistakes i see most, ranked by what they cost

design · 2026-10-14 · 5 min

i look at a lot of small business sites. the mistakes repeat with a regularity that is almost comforting. these are the ones i see most, ordered by what they cost — not by how bad they look.

1. the home page does not say what the business does

"soluzioni innovative per il tuo business" could belong to four thousand companies. the visitor has three seconds and no patience. the fix is one sentence with a verb and a noun: "riparo caldaie a parma, anche il sabato".

cost: the entire visit. everything else on the site is wasted if this fails.

2. the action is invisible

the phone number in the footer, the contact page three taps away, the form at the bottom of a page with no button. on a phone, the action must be reachable with the thumb without scrolling.

cost: people who wanted to contact you and did not.

3. the form asks too much

eight fields, a required VAT number, a "how did you find us" dropdown before anyone has decided to talk. every field is a reason to leave. name, email, one line. the rest is a conversation.

cost: the lead, silently.

4. the site is a brochure about the company, not about the customer

"la nostra storia", "i nostri valori", "la nostra missione" for three screens before a single service. the customer is looking for their problem, not your org chart. about pages are for after the decision, not before.

cost: the visitor who never reaches the part that concerns them.

5. no proof anywhere

no reviews, no client names, no photos of the work, no numbers. just adjectives. "qualità" is a claim; a photo of the finished kitchen is proof.

cost: trust, which is the only currency a small site has.

6. text that is hard to read

grey on white, 12px, full-width lines, centred paragraphs, all caps. the content may be good; nobody will read it. contrast and line length are not aesthetic choices, they are access requirements.

cost: everyone over 45, and everyone on a phone in the sun.

7. the mobile version is an afterthought

the desktop design squeezed into a phone: tiny tap targets, horizontal scroll, a menu that hides the only page that matters. more than half the visits are on a phone. designing desktop-first is designing for the minority.

cost: the majority of your traffic.

8. nothing happens after submit

the form sends an email to an address nobody checks, or shows a blank page, or reloads. the visitor is not sure it worked, so they leave. the business thinks the site "doesn't bring clients".

cost: the reputation of the whole site.

9. the site is slow and nobody measured it

a 6 MB home page, five fonts, a carousel of full-resolution photos. on a phone on mobile data it takes eight seconds. the visitor is gone before the first image.

cost: every visitor on a bad connection, which is most of them.

10. the design imitates a template

the same hero, the same three icons, the same stock photo of a handshake. it is not ugly; it is indistinguishable. indistinguishable is worse than plain, because plain can still be specific.

cost: the memory of the visit, which is the only thing that makes someone come back.

the pattern

nine of these ten are not visual. they are decisions about what the page is for. a redesign that changes the colours and keeps the decisions changes nothing.

if you want to fix one thing this week: rewrite the first sentence and make the action visible on a phone. how to improve the ux of a site is the ordered list.

faq

what is the biggest web design mistake?

not saying what the business does, for whom, where, in the first sentence. everything else can be fixed; a visitor who does not understand the offer is already gone.

is a redesign the fix?

rarely. most of these mistakes are copy and structure decisions. a redesign that keeps them produces the same site with better colours.

how do i find my site's mistakes?

open it on a phone, on mobile data, and try to contact the business as a stranger would. note where you hesitate. that hesitation is the list.