Every one of us strives for perfection but certain mistakes just happen so that our learning gets even more consolidated. The same with website designers who learns a few things from own experience and most others from the experience of other designers or professional community as a whole. There are few things that no longer you can afford to do when designing a website. These bear a strict ‘no’, while there are others that depends on the type of website you are developing and your target audience, focus area, etc. Considering all these aspects here we introduce 10 deadly mistakes to avoid in website design.
A ‘zombie’ looking homepage
A website homepage that looks too much cluttered with either a lot of information for displaying in one page or too clumsy design that distracts user attention everywhere and nowhere in particular – that precisely is akin to a zombie look. A user would prefer a clean design rather than this all in one place zombie homepage. Homepage is where you create the very first impression to the visitor and lure him to stay there and go to other pages of his interest. Naturally you just have to put on his boots to see how the homepage clutter drives away users from your website.
Using flash in web design
Still some developers prefer Flash for creating some great animated design for their created webpage but what they do not know is that Flash is outmoded long ago because too many negative factors. Flash takes hell lot of time to load, it is unsuitable for responsive design as it does not load in mobile devices and from a designer’s point of view you have to learn a whole language just to give some animated effects.
Non-responsive web layout and design
Can anybody still now think of designing an entire website that would open perfectly in desktops, not in mobile or handheld devices? Surprisingly there are designers who still do not show enough maturity to use responsive mobile friendly layout and design. In a time when mobile browsing is fast outpacing other devices, responsive design should be the order of the day.
Poor navigation and page speed
Your design should win traffic to stay on the page and go to other pages. But if they just cannot find the ease of getting around, how can you expect them to stay longer? Yes, to facilitate users getting easy navigation to all pages of the site a simple, straightforward and clear navigation is must. There are sites where you have to sweat your way out only to find the next page button of an article that continues for several pages. And there are sites that take minutes to load the next link or the page user tried to open. All these issues are big enough to make users frustrated with your website.
Non-optimized images and videos
You have given really big high resolution images to create a solid impression but when it takes more than the desired time to load the whole thing has no meaning. Same is true with on page videos. You should use media files and images optimized for fast loading, otherwise it would create more of a negative impact rather than the impression you strived to create.
Not having enough white space around the content
Clear visibility of the content is a big issue for web designers and you just cannot ignore it. Offering enough white space around the published content text and images would make them more readable and watchable. Do not just gush forth everything within a small space. Rather give contents enough space to breathe and use multiple pages to reveal the content gradually.
Using background music or auto loading video
I opened a webpage as soon as it finished loading, background music would start and to my amazement even I won’t find the button to stop it (thinking that it must have been an on-site ad feature that can be stopped or paused by the user). Similarly automatically loading advertisement video files also cause enough irritation. These auto loading and auto playing media contents make use of more internet data and users do not like such forced uses.
Looking too design savvy without enough content
A website has a lot of funny or eye catching design attributes. On surface level it is nevertheless praiseworthy but what about next? Can it cut deeper a mark as far as usefulness is concerned? Unless you cannot offer valuable or useful contents, however attractive design you offer it won’t amount to anything. The contents make a site useful, not so called look and feel. While look and feel makes a solid first impression you just let it stay by offering useful and effective contents.
Poor buttons, fonts and contrasts
Using micro mini buttons you offer a hell of burden for mobile users. Similarly small fonts make it harder for touch input. Another important aspect is obviously the contrast of colors in page, navigation buttons and text fonts. There is no need of too much stylization and buttons and text fonts should be optimized for use in any devices. Contrast would increase visibility for the user and would help to create a clean impression.
Not offering any search button
This is one of the common mistakes by a vast majority of websites. Search button is the most user friendly option to let users find any on-site content just within seconds, otherwise they would feel finding any content as extremely time consuming and leave the site for somewhere else. These days web users have least patience and an absence of search button would enough to ignite their impatience even more.
The above mentioned mistakes have serious consequences for your search ranks, organic traffic and usefulness and as a webmaster you would certainly like to take care of all of them. Web design has gone through multidimensional change in the past few years thanks to the rapid proliferation of internet ready mobile devices. Today, every designer is aware of the demand in stake and we are only introducing their perspective.
