The Invisible Mistakes That Make a Website Look Like a Cheap Template (And How to Fix Them)
Before you carry on reading: this isn't a finance article. It's a wake-up call.
Picture this: you invest over $2,000 in a website, and months later you realise there isn't a single penny of return. Your site looks like a PDF floating around the internet — lonelier than a ghost town. That happened to me, back when the business was still called NETWORKING (today, SAADLI).
A bit of context first: I built my first site back in 2019, with the basics I knew at the time, using Squarespace's free trial. Once I saw the platform's potential. I decided to subscribe. It worked well for about a year and a half. Then, in 2022, once I had more clients and more income coming in, I felt I needed to hand the design over to someone more experienced — so I hired an outside provider. I'm not sharing this to badmouth anyone. I'm sharing it because it happened, and because thank goodness for the discomfort that pushes us to learn what we never planned on learning.
I paid, and months went by without a single new client coming through that channel. Everything still came through word of mouth, exactly as it had before I spent that $2,000.
Why "looking expensive" isn't about budget
I never haggled on the price. I did my research beforehand and confirmed what I was being charged was fair. I didn't go for a £300 template either — I wasn't after something hundreds of other people could buy and simply swap the colours and text on. I wanted something bespoke, and I paid for that.
The problem was never the budget. The problem was the invisible details nobody told me actually mattered.
The invisible mistakes — check your own site as you read
— Do your images have a description for Google, or are they left blank?
None of my images or visual content had alt text. Google had no way of knowing what each image showed or what it was meant to represent.
— Does every page on your site have its own title and meta description, or are they empty?
Not one of my landing pages — Home, Services, Contact, FAQs — had its own SEO title or meta description. And within the structure, there were several loose H1s, with no clear hierarchy. Google understood my site was in Spanish because it's a language it recognises, but it had no idea what the site was actually about.
— Does each service clearly say who it's for and what problem it solves?
I had a value proposition, a mission, a vision — all written out. But the goal and audience for each service never came through clearly in the final design, even though I'd handed over the copy myself. That's where I learnt something that's now part of how I work: if a designer doesn't provide the copy, or you're left writing it yourself, hire someone who knows copywriting — or make sure your designer includes it as part of the offer. In my case, when I design a website, the copy gets built together with you — it's not something I invent on my own, it's shared work.
— Is your platform clean, or has someone stuffed it with unnecessary code?
I found over 3,000 lines of injected code on a site built on a platform that doesn't need it. I didn't know how to spot that back then — I do now.
— Does your typography and layout serve function, or just aesthetics?
There was far too much movement and animation I never asked for. As a marketing engineer, I know consumer psychology calls for one clear action — too much movement distracts, it doesn't elevate.
And it wasn't just the movement. The typography was far too large, almost jarring — as if it were shouting at visitors "I'm assuming you can't read properly", when really it had nothing to do with the brand's identity, just a poorly thought-through decorative choice. The same with spacing: it wasn't a style choice, it was an obstacle. Now I know this isn't an aesthetic issue — it's a functional one.
There was another bit of friction I didn't know how to spot at the time: how many clicks it took my visitor to complete an action. These days, if you want someone to buy, fill in a form, or book a call, it shouldn't take more than one or two clicks. Every extra click is a chance for someone to simply walk away.
Here's a stat that backs this up: in 2026, mobile traffic makes up somewhere between 62% and 64% of global web traffic, according to StatCounter, via Statista, and mobile bounce rates run about 10 percentage points higher than desktop — people abandon far more often when navigation feels complicated or there's too much visual noise, right on the screen where most of your visitors are going to find you first.
How to check your own site, no settings required
You don't need to know any code to spot these mistakes. Head to Google's PageSpeed Insights, paste in your URL, and you'll get a general overview: how fast your site loads, whether it's carrying excess code, and whether it's missing descriptions or metadata.
If you'd rather have someone review this for you with a professional eye, instead of working through the checklist alone, that's exactly what I look at in a website audit — line by line, with the same standard I used to fix my own.
And beyond speed, ask yourself this honestly: are you actually getting notifications? A completed form, a newsletter sign-up, a booked call — every platform lets you know by email when someone takes action. If nothing's happened within the first 6 months, your site is a ghost town, no matter how much you paid for it.
Checklist: Is your website actually working?
Every image has a description (alt text) that Google can read.
Every page has its own SEO title and meta description.
There's a clear heading hierarchy (a single H1, with H2s and H3s in logical order).
Each service states who it's for and what problem it solves.
There's no unnecessary code injected into your platform.
Your copy was written with intention, not filled in as an afterthought.
Animation guides the eye toward one action, rather than competing with it.
Typography and spacing prioritise readability, not just brand aesthetics.
Visitors can complete an action (purchase, form, booking) in one or two clicks, max.
You're receiving real notifications: form submissions, sign-ups, bookings.
You've tested your site's actual speed on PageSpeed Insights.
You have a realistic timeframe to recover your investment — ideally, no more than 3 years.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Not necessarily. Most of these can be fixed without rebuilding anything — metadata, alt text, and heading hierarchy can all be adjusted directly in your platform's editor.
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If your platform is meant to be "no-code", like Squarespace, and you're still seeing hundreds of lines in the custom code section, that's a red flag — chances are, not all of it is actually doing anything.
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The checklist in this article is something you can go through entirely on your own, no technical knowledge required. If you end up finding more to fix than you can manage, that's when it's worth delegating.
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Yes, it can still be reviewed. Regardless of the platform your site is built on, I can review it and hand you a report with the findings. That's exactly what's included in my website audit.
Where this leaves you
If you, like me back in 2022, have invested in your website and feel that money hasn't come back to you in the form of clients, it's not necessarily the design — none of these mistakes may be visible at first glance. And that's exactly the trap: looking right isn't the same as actually working.
Did any of these hit close to home? I'm keen to hear your thoughts, so please share them in the comments — with the email you check most often. I read and respond personally to each one
