Common website design mistakes, though, can very quickly derail even your strongest efforts. And while you constantly hear about what not to do when creating your site. But do you understand what not to do? How can you avoid these common website design mistakes? Well, here’s 12 most common website design mistakes that kill many good businesses.
No Responsive Design
Not using a responsive website design. This is one of the most fundamental website design mistakes because responsive web design is the way to go today when it comes to making sure people can find your site easily on every kind of screen. With responsive web design, your website will adjust itself automatically to ensure it looks great on all kinds of screens. This means no more hard work for you – just smarter web design.
No Testing
Not testing your website to see if it’s actually working. You can spend months designing and testing your website and still end up with broken links, images missing, etc. – if you don’t even test your site to see how it works. You need to test your website design mistakes to avoid them. The best way to test your website is through a simple Google search.
Clutter
Making your website too confusing or cluttered. Don’t make mistakes in the design of your website by making it too cluttered or complicated. There are certain design elements that simply attract users like magnets and they won’t go anywhere else. So in order to avoid website design mistakes like this, try to make your websites as simple as possible.
Bad Fonts
Using low-quality fonts. This is yet another common mistake. Most people are simply too lazy to go out and buy new fonts because they know that buying a new font will cost them more than they want to spend. They then make a mistake in using the low-quality fonts. Low-quality fonts are typically very hard to read and hard to distinguish from high-quality fonts. That’s why it’s so important to choose a font of good quality that will make your website readable.
Using Too Many Graphics
Even though flash movies have become so common on the internet, many businesses still try to stick to real photos and illustrations instead. However, these photos and illustrations can be very distracting. Not only are they less attractive, but they can also be very hard to distinguish from real photos and illustrations. This is one of the most common web design mistakes that many businesses make and it definitely holds true for SEO.
Outdated Browsers
Using outdated browsers. One of the most common website design mistakes is that of using old versions of browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox. Many businesses still prefer to use Internet Explorer because it’s easier to use and offers better compatibility with various web standards. However, many businesses now prefer to use high quality cross browser testing services so that their websites will always be usable with the latest browsers and versions.
Poor Use Of White Space
Another one of the most common web design mistakes that people often commit is to skip white space. Some web designers think that white space will make a website look boring, but the truth is that without it, the website would lose its overall functionality and effectiveness. White space makes your pages look more professional and less cluttered, but you need to make sure that you use it correctly.
Outdated Social Media Buttons
Using outdated social media buttons. Some web designers mistakenly include social media icons in website designs and end up including all the wrong icons or none at all. It’s very important to set up your social media buttons in a way that makes it easy for your customers to find them and use them. If you have outdated buttons, you might include an “x” to label them so that your customers can quickly find the right one. Additionally, your buttons must link to social media pages instead of just being listed on your landing pages. This makes everything you do on your website fall into place and your overall conversion rate goes up.
Bad User Experience
Bad user experience and bad usability combine together. You should incorporate the best practices in website design that focus on the user experience and user experiences, such as responsive design, fluid layout, and clean navigation. While these practices are incredibly useful when designing websites, they’re also extremely hard to maintain in practice. You won’t be able to take advantage of all the wonderful advances in user experience and usability improvement technologies like Flash and JavaScript without also being able to take advantage of them in practice and keep abreast of their developments. Flash and Java are both very hard to maintain and to update; this is something you really have to pay attention to.
Bandwidth Limits
Poor use of bandwidth limits. A lot of web designers make the biggest web design mistakes by failing to account for how much bandwidth their users are using. These designers also don’t take advantage of responsive web design and end up using a mobile phone in a browser that isn’t suited for it. Responsive designs to help you create great user journeys websites that are designed for any device and that can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of their bandwidth requirements.