Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash
"A stitch in time saves nine."
This old but true saying has been taught to us since our childhood by our teachers and parents merely to ensure that we keep on correcting our small mistakes in time to prevent them from turning out into huge non-correctable deeds or something tough to mend.
People might miss out on appreciating you for your good deeds, but they will surely not miss out on pointing out at your small mistakes. Same is the case with the web design. A single flaw in your website can overshadow all your work of making it an amazing website.
In this blog, we will discuss few such commonly committed, small yet serious mistakes that may create a bad impression for your website. Bad impression or lousy user experience is killer for any business website in competitive word.
Here are such 10 common web design mistakes that can kill your website.
1. Improper navigation
Too many hyperlinks and or deeply nested site navigation ultimately confuse the users. It might sound illogical to you, but the fact is that a page overloaded with links may not facilitate the users, but it might just confuse them, and make it harder for them to get to the destination where they actually wanted to go. Moreover, a website without proper navigation is an ultimate failure for the users as they cannot correctly understand and explore the information on your website.
2. Unorganized images
Images are the best way to express any emotions or give a message to the users, and hence their incorporation in the web page surely enhances the performance. But when the images are incorrectly placed or do not match with the website theme, they cause the worst impact on the visitors. Use proper images at proper places with a topic theme in mind. Images must be modified as required for their colours, sizes and quality to make them the perfect fit for the website. The most important thing is their placement on the site. Images popping out of nowhere are surely of no good!
3. Non-mobile-friendly website.
In today’s era, where mobile phones are default devices for everything work and fun if your website is not responsive to different mobile devices, it's almost the end of the game for your website. Hence, for a website to be mobile-friendly is a must. Moreover, the best user experience on all devices is a must in today’s ever-expanding field of competition.
4. Styling not even
Styling is a must for any webpage, but as we all know: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Well, styling on any webpage includes the font, colours and the overall theme selected for the web contents creates a smooth flow and amazing user experience. Even if all the components are perfectly designed, but if their styling does not come together as a whole, the website is a big flop.
5. Content on the webpage is illegible, improper or non-precise.
Content is another key factor in deciding the destiny of any web page. If one goes wrong with the content things can go wrong almost immediately. So plan it well and if required, modified it quickly. Content is what the visitors look for in a website. Moreover, even if the content is apt but if its presentation is not proper; either more colours are incorporated, or more styles used in the same para, or the font sizes vary frequently and haphazardly, or the font is too small to be read, it is a big no-no.
6. The website is either with too much content or is with too less content.
Precise content with the engaging presentation is must, but at the same time, the right amount of content is also a must for any website. Users must not get bored reading thousands of words to understand a simple idea. On the other hand, a website with very less content can defeat the purpose of its existence itself, if it failed to provide just enough information to its visitors. Hence, the availability of the right amount of information is necessary for satisfied users.
7. Webpage overloaded by advertisements.
This is one of the most undesired things that any user would like to encounter. Imagine a situation wherein you are trying to search a website to get help with your science project, and the site is loaded with loads of irrelevant and too many advertisements (for example, an online shop for clothing)! Would you ever be able to find sense in the content of the webpage, how so ever apt it is? As it is said, a proper environment too makes a lot of difference. Moreover, pop up advertisement cause undesired switches of pages for users, which keeps the website from being user-friendly and causes a very unpleasant experience for the users.
8. A website not tested properly
Testing is one of the most crucial elements of web development. Flaws that can be found by testing are those which are beyond the vision of coding. For example, a certain piece of code might not run well when exercised more than one time. Moreover, there might be a component that doesn’t work well with certain versions of browsers. At times, a certain field accepts certain garbage value if the code is not validated correctly and causes memory wastage. Such errors are fatal for website success, and it ruins it. So test well before deployment.
9. Unclear contact details
Contact details are directly bound with the sales of your firm. If one wants to contact you but doesn’t get clear and easily accessible contact details, a user might just be as disappointed and would not struggle much to find it. This means the loss of customers. Well, I am pretty sure that is not what you want; hence keep your contact details including email address, phone number and links to social media pages as distinct and readily available as you can; preferably in the footer section of your web page.
10 Outdated design code or template
90’s design or a simple table like design is a big failure on the name of design. In this cutting edge competitive 21st century, it is an unstated fact that you need to update designs too along with the content. Here, the design is not only in the sense of outer appearance or the user interface but also the code you build up for your website. Hence, understand the purpose of your website and accordingly come up with a new and unique design. Use the latest technology for your website. Update it as often required.
Conclusion
A compelling and useful website isn’t an option anymore. The poorly designed website causes businesses to lose customers and money. Good web design doesn't always mean spending a lot of money and making it look pretty; it means avoiding crucial small or big mistakes and correcting them on regularly and on time.
Do you have any more suggestion or comments on how to avoid mistakes and make the website really worth for visitors?