Common Mistakes When Designing a Website
Your website design plays a big part in what credibility your business has, with visitors making this decision based upon the mistakes they find. From incorrectly spelt words, poor use of punctuation and white space, through to colour clashes and difficult navigation, there are plenty of common web design mistakes to avoid.
In this article, we'll discuss the most common mistakes made when designing a website, along with ways these mistakes can be corrected or avoided.
Most Commonly Made Web Design Mistakes
We've made a list of the most common web design mistakes we see, along with some fixes for them:
- Poor navigation
A website which is difficult to navigate is off putting to visitors and encourages a high bounce rate. There are different types of website navigation you could use, including the horizontal navigation bar, drop down navigation menu, hamburger navigation menu, vertical sidebar navigation menu and footer navigation menu. Your choice of one of our web templates and on which devices your website is viewed on will automatically determine your website's type of navigation. These menu types are all great and are not the issue. The problem is in the way that the pages have been organised within your menus. Your website should have a clear page hierarchy within the navigation menu, with the most important pages at the top, and then grouped into sub menu categories. This makes it easier for a visitor to find their way around your website with minimal amounts of clicking.
- Poorly displayed text
A page that has a lot of text isn't necessarily a problem unless that text is poorly displayed. Large chunks of text are off putting and unlikely to be read. Text below the page fold is also unlikely to be read unless the visitor is made aware of it so that they scroll down the page. Text which uses headings, bullet points or numbering, white space and integrates with images is much easier for the eye to scroll through and read.
- Low quality brand images
We see this mostly with DIY logos and web graphics. For instance the logo is heavily pixelated and too large. A big logo at the top of a web page pushes all of the other information further down, often past the fold. This means that visitors cannot quickly identify relevant information and may click back quickly. A professionally designed logo that can be easily resized is best and provides a positive brand image to customers.
- Unclear calls to action
A call to action is a prompt that encourages your website visitors to do something specific. An unclear call to action provides vague messaging to visitors, who then get fail to follow your CTA, resulting in low conversion rates. For example, an unclear CTA could be 'Learn More' or 'See Here', while a clear CTA is 'Click Here to Subscribe.'
- Hard to find contact information
Your website is your online presence and customers use it to find out more about your business and how to contact it. An obvious place to put it in on the Contact page, which should be located on your main navigation menu. You can also display your address and contact details in your header or footer page areas, or within text on a page. You can also have a contact form through which customers can email you, and some websites have this form in their footer to make this very easy for visitors.
- Choice of fonts and font sizes
Your font choice and sizes should be guided by your brand guidelines. Having a wide range of font types makes it hard to identify key information on a page and it looks unprofessional. Using a range of font sizes in undefined areas also looks poor. Instead your main text should use only one font type and size, with the same going for your headings.
- Inconsistent use of buttons
Buttons on a site show visitors where to click next to find specific information. If you use a range of button types, it makes it hard for the visitor to know which ones they should pay attention to. All buttons should contain a clear call to action and be the same colour and shape, with the button width changing size depending upon the CTA text used.
- Poor product photos
This is an incredibly common mistake we see in new websites. Poor product photographs are often blurry, too small or too large, are not consistent in size, use poor lighting, fail to show enough details and use inconsistent backgrounds. Online customers only have product photos to go on when they are deciding whether to make a purchase or not. Good product photos are those which are consistent in size and background, and show the product from different angles. Take a read of our article Capturing Product Photos for tips on taking great product photos.
Having a well designed website promotes confidence and trust in your customers, as it is the online representation of your business. We recommend that before designing your own website, that you do some research and find examples of other websites which demonstrate great user experiences or UX. You can find out more in our articles about best design practices et how to check the UX of your website.
Tags: web design
Posted: Friday 1 November 2024
