Designing a website can surely be taken as a fun challenge. Initially, clients think that having the right domain name and appropriate content is enough to have an effective website. But what is usually overlooked is how a website’s design affects the result. Web design is as important as the content.
Successful websites are the ones combining great design, appropriate functionality, professional content and a relevant domain name.
On a global scale, many websites are adapting to new design trends, which are thriving in the World Wide Web. Properly adapting to the trends would provide any business with a quality web design, and consequently increase in traffic and sales.
However, designers still tend to commit the same mistakes while web designing. A common theory as to why web designers commit these mistakes is because most of the time they critique their own design instead of getting an external opinion from an industry expert or another web designer.
Web Design 7 Common Mistakes done while web designing:
1. Proper use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
Known to be a tool to provide consistency across all pages and help web designers takes control over their website’s appearance, when used the right way, CSS can be effective and provide a professional outcome to the website look and feel.
Page lagging has always caused headaches to readers; even website owners themselves hate slow websites. A page can run smoothly and can be quicker to load with CSS.
In addition CSS allow web designers to take full control over the appearance of their website and fix issues like font sizes, hyperlinks, text and image placements and keyword emphasis. It is important that web designers learn to organise and document their code properly so facilitate CSS changes and improvements.
2. Poor Design
There are a number of basic design mistakes done while web designing. Some tend to overlook poor design points such as basic layout organisation, imbalanced screens, and focus on the wrong content, content layout and general design features.
Some designers offer way too many unnecessary features and instead lack the needed information and call to action to serve the readers’ needs.
Examples of bad layout
Probably one of the biggest challenges that web designers face is the adaptation to new web designing trends. New ideas and tricks sprout out of nowhere and suddenly they become a ‘must implement’ on new websites. Surely you wouldn’t want your website to be left behind among those others who have more modern interfaces and interactions.
As web designers or web developers what we want is to make browsing convenient for our readers. Having a messy page with its contents scattered everywhere, this defeats that purpose. It is every designer’s task to avoid confusion for their readers on where to go and instead lead their eyes to the enticing factors of the website.
3. No mobile responsiveness design
The latest challenge for web designers is making the websites as interactive and attractive for all screen sizes and mobile devices.
This mistake is one of the most crucial on the list because of the growing trend of mobile devices usage to navigate the web.
Nowadays websites should be mobile responsive, automatically re-adjusting the website design to fit different screen sizes and devices such as mobile phones and tablets. Mobile responsive websites also rank better on Google search engine.
Mobile Responsive adapts the website to all devices and screen sizes.
4. Lack of alignment
A significant component in web designing, alignment is considered as an initial design element and a must to provide a quality web design to clients. Make sure that all elements of the website are also aligned on mobile and tablet screens.
The most important goal for a web page is for it to be clearly readable. Setting up your web pages to a uniform alignment that makes it easier for readers to read the texts is highly ideal. Being cautious with the alignment is always a good thing, especially when you have readers who notice the slightest pixel details. Bad alignment makes your website looks unprofessional.
5. Too much colour
Colour brings web design elements to life. Too many colours packed into one space on the other hand can have a negative impact. Adding way too many colours in one page is not the only way to attract readers. Most likely this will drive away potential readers because it all looks visually messed up and difficult to interact with.
Colour is one of the most important factors in the process of web designing. It will take time and experimentations in choosing the colour scheme, so don’t be afraid to test those warm and cold hues. Make sure that before you put up the final colour schemes, it is not too loud that it visually could scare people away from you page, nor too dull for your readers attention.
6. Forgetting CTAs (Call to Action)
Call to Actions (CTA) are design elements built into the page to attract users to enquiry further, purchase or continue to interact with the page. CTA is especially important for ecommerce websites, where the aim is to attract their target clients, and lure them to purchase or avail of their products and services.
This is why Call to Action (CTA) icons or buttons are important. These icons or buttons help lead the reader or potential client to take action then and there.
By making significant call to actions, you can turn the typical informational intent of a potential client to transactional interactions. Web Designers tend to forget to place Call to Action in the most important pages, or place them in the correct place.
As a web designer, make sure the Call to Action is:
- Situated next to the topic it relates to.
- Stands out as a button to progress to the next step.
- Only one per page, so you don’t confuse the customer.
Examples of call to action
7. Broken links
A must in every web designer’s work is to make sure that all links within the site works. Aside from the usual frustration that your readers will feel upon stumbling into you broken links, it will look badly on your company, come off as an unprofessional factor and potential lose customers. In addition, your Google Ranking will go down if your website has 404 pages and broken links.
Before delivering anything to your clients, you must always test and make sure that they work as flawlessly as possible. This also goes for external link, web designers should make sure that the links that they put up on their websites work and lead the reader to where they want. In order to avoid the usual 404 alert, constant testing on the status of the links or hyperlinks should be done.
We have tools available that can scan your website and identify broken links. Contact us for more information about this.
With the ever-changing trends in the web design practices, we recommend businesses to have a strong partner to manage their website requirements, design improvements and provide ongoing advice of new trends and best marketing practices.
We provide a free consultation on what needs to be improved on your website design. Contact us today.
Light Media is a leading company in bringing a competitive solution for our clients’ websites in Australia, offering high quality web design and web development services.