Being a web designer in today’s times can be a tough task. Expectations are high and time is always against you. This makes for a perfect recipe for design blunders. In one of our previous articles, we’ve talked about tips to churn out awesome designs and we think it’s prudent we talk about web design mistakes to avoid. Also, may we point out, not only will this make your site look better but also improve customer conversions. So without wasting much of your time lets begin:
1] Watch your Fonts: We understand the urge to make things look pretty but font is one area where you’re probably better off with something that is legible. When it comes to fonts, you only get points to make your content readable. Whether you’re designing a personal blog or an ecommerce website, you need to make sure all information is easily readable
2] Make navigation simple: Help people navigate your website with ease. Clear titles/subtitles are a must. There is no value in confusing the visitor to stay on longer. On the contrary, you may actually lose the visitor out of sheer frustration. This principle applies 10x if you’re an ecommerce site. Gone are the days of confusing the customer to buy more. You can win that 1 sale but you’ll lose a lifetime customer if you’re website is confusing
3] Don’t be Flashy: We can think of more than 1 reason why you’re better of avoiding flash. But our key point to you is the potential load time of your customers website. A beautiful site that loads slow is literally useless. In todays times, people want things fast, at lightning speeds. Your goal should be to diseminate information as fast as you can on every page of you website
4] Help customers find help: Make sure the Contact or Support section is easy to find. All trusted websites have contact details clearly visible. Inculcate this in your design principle. The customer may or may not know about this but a hidden Contact/Help link is just a bad idea.
5] NO Pop-Ups: 90’s are gone and they took the dreaded pop-ups with them, need we say more?
6] Mind your Language: A lot of designers get content from the customer and a lot of them have copywriters who draft it. Eitherways, it’s critical that there are no typos, no grammatical errors or other such mistakes. Nothing is shabbier than a website with typos. We say Mind your language is a good rule to have.
7] No Horizontal scrolling: It goes without saying that a web page needs to fit all major screen resolutions. This means in most cases a view should not be required to scroll horizontally. We come across such sites every now and then and trust us we hate it!
8] You may not enter: A website is like a book, anyone should be able to have a peak. Unless, the site has confidential (or some inappropriate) information we cannot think of good reason to have a “Click here to enter”. These interstitial pages are a dead trend and we say let it be so.
9] Watch the color: Steer away from using garish colors and weird combinations. This makes a website look shabby and the text difficult to read. Here’s a some cool resource to make sure you get your color combos right: Paletton
10] Ditch the audio: It’s been a while since we’ve come across a site that had background music and we’re happy about. It was a trend that was tried but failed miserably. Music or other ambient activity could be distracting to the visitors, it could have serious impact on the conversion rates of the website.
11] No Research: This is criminal, it’s a mantra every designer should follow religuously. Before starting any project invest time in researching the vertical, competitor websites and such. It offers a ton of perspective and makes you look super smart for coming up with awesome suggestions 🙂
12] Stay Lite: Image heavy sites are an all round bad idea, they take time to load and cost a bomb. Stay away from the temptation and use images only where necessary. Explain this to client if they ask for it, they’ll thank you later. A heave site only leaves the viewers frustrated, never to return to your website.
There you have it, these are some of the most common mistakes and also the ones that are easy to avoid. Steer clear from these to get an edge over others in your design output. We hope this article was of a little help in making your work a tab bit easier. Please do share your thoughts in the comment section below, we’d love you hear about your experiences or tips that you’ve learnt in your trade.
