For many companies, the marketing site is an incredibly valuable lead channel, marketing asset, and for some, the front door to their business.

But not everyone has a marketing site that is optimized to drive traffic or even convert their traffic into paying customers. I would argue that most sites aren’t.

Over the years, I’ve seen intentionally designed websites from some of the top companies in the world. Here are some of the easy mistakes that they always avoid, and how you can too:

Incorrect heading hierarchy

These first few are very basic, but you’d be surprised at how many companies still miss them. Every website on the internet needs to follow correct heading hierarchy, H1 → H6. Here’s an example of how the heading code might look on a clean site:

<h1>
<h2>
<h3>
<h4>
<h4>
<h3>
<h4>
<h4>
<h2>

If this is confusing at all to you, just think about how you would create a numbered list in a document — it’s the same idea. You can’t have an H2 before you have an H1, and you can’t have an H3 before you have an H2.

One important thing to keep in mind is that each page can only have one <h1> element, and that element should be the first heading on the page. If you add more than one H1 heading to a page, you will get docked by Google and other search engines.

Unoptimized images - Large file sizes causing slow load times

When your website loads in a user’s browser, the browser has to literally “load” all of the code and assets in your website. So, the smaller the total size of your site, the faster it will load in a user’s browser.

This is important because we don’t want to wast people’s time. We want to serve them the information they are looking for as fast as possible. Images tend to be some of the larger files included in websites, so make sure to compress and optimize them for their use in your site.

Here are some best practices when it comes to images:

• Compress images as small as possible while retaining quality. TinyPNG is a great option for this.
• Convert image files to next gen formats like AVIF.
• Crop images into the aspect ratio they will be used on your site.
• Bonus: Upload and serve smaller versions of your images at smaller breakpoints. This is automatically handled by some builders like Webflow, but not every tool or tech stack automatically does this for you.

Missing metadata - Hurts SEO and accessibility

When it comes to SEO, the foundations are held in your metadata. This is the information that gets surfaced in SERP’s, and it’s typically an important player in ranking for specific keywords.

For every page on your site, you should make sure the following information is complete:

• Page Title
• Page Description
• Page OpenGraph image
• Alt Tags on images and other visual assets

Here’s a really great deep dive into the importance of metadata and tags, and how to use each strategically.

Too many CTA's - Not enough clarity on what you want your visitors to do

Imagine you walk into a restaurant and they immediately offer you several different options: sit inside, sit at the bar, sit outside, wait in the lobby, walk a dog… You’d probably be overwhelmed and experience a little bit of information overload.

Unfortunately, too many websites do this — they offer several different entry points into their business.

At first, it sounds like it would actually make sense to give your visitors options, but in reality, people are already generally overwhelmed with information. It’s best to give your visitor one (at most two) very clear paths forward with your business.

In most cases, it’s best to lean directly into this clear path in the first content that appears on your website. You should be able to see (without scrolling down) exactly what your business’s value proposition is, plus a clear path into that value.

Inconsistent UI design & spacing - Messy representation of your business

Here’s a humbling stat to think about — there are more websites on the internet than there are good designers, or at least trained designers. Combine that with the fact that many businesses don’t want to bother with the cost and time often required to put together a really well designed website.

The result of this is that many websites on the internet are just missing the basics of good design.

If you want your design to feel cohesive and professional, you should give some attention to these basics:

• Consistent vertical spacing between sections
• A limited, cohesive color palette - I like to follow the 60/30/10 rule. Jesse Showalter has a great explainer on this.
• Weak font choices - Good type can make such a big difference. There are tons of good font foundries out there. My favorite is PangramPangram.

These 3 are simple areas to fix that, when fine tuned, can elevate the experience of your website significantly.

Non-responsive design - Poor mobile experience

In the modern era, you’d be surprised to see how many businesses still haven’t given any attention to how their website looks on devices outside of a desktop/laptop.

Do a quick search and you’ll find most experts say that at least 50% or more of website traffic comes from mobile devices like phones or tablets. That means that the majority of your visitors (of course depending on your audience) are likely to visit your website on a mobile device.

If your website is not optimized for mobile, in addition to desktop breakpoints, you’re missing an opportunity to serve a large percentage of your visitor well, potentially missing out on many opportunities to convert that traffic into paying customers — not to mention the SEO hit you’ll almost definitely receive from Google and other search engines for not being responsive.

So how do you fix this? Well most modern web builders allow you to design across breakpoints, and you should definitely give each breakpoint the attention it deserves. It’s a good practice to also test your site on actual mobile devices.

Excessive third-party scripts - Slows page speed

Along with large image and video files, scripts can easily slow your site speed if they are too large or if you have too many.

You can get a really good idea of which assets and scripts are slowing your site down by using the free PageSpeed Insights tool from Google. You just input your website url and let the tool run a quick audit.

Tools like this can show you exactly which scripts need to be dealt with, and sometimes offer helpful suggestions for what to do. In many cases, you can defer these scripts, or even host them elsewhere to help take the load off of your site when served in your user’s browser.

It’s important to remember, however, that these tools are usually providing estimates — aka they are not an exact representation of the experience that every visitor to your site has. Performance for your visitors will vary based on browser, internet connection, and other factors that are out of your control.

My recommendation is that you take these audits as a pool of tests that you can run. Over time, you’ll be able to see your website improve.

Uncompressed code files - Bloated CSS/JS/HTML

Just like with images, the code that makes up your website needs to be optimized for performance. Many websites are running with completely uncompressed CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files, which means they're serving much larger files than necessary to their visitors.

Here's what typically happens with uncompressed code:

• Your development files include spaces, comments, and formatting that make them readable
• These "human-readable" files are much larger than they need to be
• When served uncompressed, they slow down your site's load time unnecessarily

The solution is to minify your code and compress it. Modern build tools like Webflow and others can automatically compress your code files → usually found in your project or publishing settings.

If you're building custom, make sure your deployment process includes these optimization steps.

Broken links and 404 errors - Damages user experience and SEO

Nothing frustrates visitors quite like clicking on a link only to land on a 404 error page. Beyond the poor user experience, broken links can seriously impact your website's SEO performance and credibility.

Broken links typically happen when:

• You've moved or deleted content without setting up proper redirects
• You've linked to external resources that no longer exist
• There are simple typos in your URLs
• Your site structure has changed during a redesign

To keep your site clean and professional, implement these practices:

• Regularly audit your site for broken links using tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console
• Set up 301 redirects whenever you move or remove pages
• Create a custom 404 page that helps users find what they're looking for
• Double-check all external links before publishing new content

Remember, every broken link is a potential customer walking away from your site. Taking the time to maintain clean, working links is a simple way to keep your visitors engaged and your search rankings healthy.