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A technical mistake in building a website is rare — developers know their craft. The real problem sits elsewhere: a wrong expectation set at the start, or a decision pushed off.
Below are the five most common mistakes when building a website, all of that kind.
The goal is never stated
"We need a website" is not a goal by itself. Whether the site is meant to capture leads, act as a catalog, or build trust changes the structure, the content, and even the design.
Without a clear goal, the developer works on assumptions, and the result often needs rebuilding at a second stage.
Copy gets written at the last moment
Starting to write copy only after design and development are already done is the most common cause of delay. The amount of copy defines the design, not the other way around.
While there is no copy yet, "placeholder" text goes in, and once it is swapped for the real thing, the design breaks and needs rework.
The mobile version gets pushed back
More attention goes to the desktop version, and mobile gets left for "we'll adapt it later." In reality, most visitors come from a phone.
- Buttons are not sized for a finger tap
- A table or a large image does not fit the screen
- Menus stay unadapted to a mobile screen
Analytics never gets connected
Once a site launches, you need to see who's visiting, where they came from, and which page they leave on. Google Analytics or a similar tool gets connected before launch, not during development.
It can be added later, but the data from the first weeks — the most valuable for comparison — is already lost.
Handover terms are never written down
If what counts as "the site is done" — how many pages, which features, which browsers were tested — is not fixed in advance, both sides end up with a different understanding at the end of the project.
That is what a project brief is for: it fixes in advance what is included and what is not. The web development service page shows what stages a project goes through and how the price is built.