6 Fatal Website Design Mistakes
(Avoid these website design mistakes or visitors will avoid your website)
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Website designing offers so many facilities that a website owner can easily get carried away and try to fill his site with applications regardless of they are required or not.
The key to a successful website design is measured in terms of the ease with which it allows visitors to access information.
This is because if you do not pay attention to these aberrations, they will affect your bottomline. Tidying up your website is not a difficult job and the returns that it brings are well worth the effort.
The following factors inhibit website navigation and you should rectify them if they are present in your website. |
1. Overwhelming the customer
The most important mantra of website designing is “Keep It Simple”. Animations, graphics, audio, video clip, etc may attract a visitor's attention but they cannot sustain it. In fact, if they are not promoting your product / service in some way, they are a definite distraction.
You have to strike a balance between presenting content in an appealing and interesting manner and ensuring that surfing your website is easy and interesting for your visitors.
This is particularly important because first time visitors do not spend more than 10-15 seconds on a web page to estimate its usefulness to them.
Ideally, the website should sport a clean uncluttered look having not more than two colour combinations, minimum changes in the font, and if possible, without patterns and designs in the background as they tend to distract the visitor from the copy.
Follow the universally accepted standards for instant recognition, for example keep the links blue and underlined.
2. An easy to load site
Remember, you have less than 10 seconds in which to convince a visitor that you have something to offer for his time and money. For this, it's important that your site loads quickly, which may not be possible if it has too many pages and is heavy with images and graphics. Each click that a visitor makes to access information on your pages tests his patience.
Try to present information in a compact manner, for most websites, very clear pictures / images are not a requirement. The size of an image increases with clarity and it becomes that much more difficult to load. Use graphics only if necessary, coloured text can also attract attention quite efficiently.
3. Difficult navigation
Do not make the visitor think about how he has to go about navigating your site. Hiding links behind graphics and changing the look and location of the navigation bar may be amusing and clever, but is certainly not appreciated by the visitor who is focused on accessing information.
Keep the design and location of your navigation bar consistent on all the pages. Change the colour of the links that have already been visited, this helps the user to decide on the course of his navigation and saves his time.
4. Important information difficult to locate
Again, if the visitor cannot locate what he is searching for, he is apt to look for it elsewhere. Therefore, crucial information, such as information on your business, products and services, contact information, etc should all be easily accessible, preferably from all the pages.
The web page gives the visitor a feel of what he is to expect inside, therefore, a home page should encourage the visitor to explore and read more.
5. Difficulty in scanning
To arrive at a decision regarding the usefulness of a site, visitors do not read the entire text on a page, they scan through it.
A difficult to scan page is quickly rejected. Ensure that the copy on you page has features such as an index, subheadings, short paragraphs, bulleted points, keywords in bold, and an easy to read writing style.
6. Browser Friendliness
Ensure that your website is accessible by users having different internet browsers, and not just Internet Explorer. The website should be designed to cater to the user's needs and facilitate a sale.
