Till date, we have had many articles ranging from the best ways to design a website to website checklist, including guidelines on how tro design a good website. We have also discussed the guidelines provided by google for web designing. Now, let’s take a path crossed not so often. Let us see what mistakes the web designers usually make and the mistakes that should be avoided while web designing.
1. Unplanned website
A mistake in the foundation, and the structure you build on it is bound to fall. Planning your website is the most important factor in the success of your website. If you ignore this, your website is going to fail. Even before you have your website, you should have clear idea on the focus of the webiste. Why do you need a website ? Your plans , your goals ? Think over the information that you want to provide, also give a thought to what pages would you like to have on your website. In short, get clear with the idea about the purpose and focus of your web design.
2. No contact information or concealing contact information.
Why do people visit your website — for information ! and eventually contact you if they are interested in your products. But if you do not provide any contact information or conceal the correct information, you are making the prospective customer frustrated. Have a contact us page on your website displayed prominently, provide all the relevant and correct contact information. Better, provide them with a link to your email on each page in the footer. While forms do look pretty and professional, they irritate the customer. If possible, do not use forms.
3. Dead links or broken links.
People come to your site for information about your company, products or services. But what if, you do not provide the information. You lose them ! Imagine, going to a multiplex to catch the latest movie and being told that movie print has not yet been delivered ? Same happens when, there is a dead link or a broken link on your website. If you are luring people to your website with information, than make sure that you do provide what they want.
4. Old or Outdated Information
How much shall we stress the importance of this point. Well, at the risk of sounding repititive let me tell that people come to your site for information, but if you provide old, stale or outdated information than you had it. People are always looking the information that is new and fresh. Make sure that you provide the latest information — this will earn credibility for your website.
5. No Uniformity
I wonder why people always like to use as many fonts and colors in a single website. This is not the coloring book of a child, or you are not out creating a rainbow. Make sure that there is uniformity in your web design. Recently I was reviewing a website and I was horrified to see that it was made in 7 different fonts and as many colors. Induce uniformity in fonts, font size and colors. It’s not to say that you should not use different colors, but keep it uniformed.
6. No Heirarchy – No Sitemap
Each and every web design should follow a structure, it is like every tree has a stem, a bark, branches, flowers & fruits. Web site designing should follow the same, every website should have its home page and every major page should be linked from the home page. Every page should be linked from atleast one other page. In short, every page should have a parent page linking to it. Create a sitemap which will show the structure of your website, so that it becomes easier for the visitors to surf your website.
7. Using Frames
Stop using frames. They are out. Period !
8. Blocking visitors mobility.
There are many web designers who like to show off their newly acquired skills, by using small codes, which are available freely, on your website. Like disabling the BACK button, or opening too many pop up windows, or disabling the right click button. Beware, this might be disastrous for your website. Do not block the mobility of website visitors, let them do what they want to and eventualyy you will see that they like your website or atleast they will hold it in good stead.
9. Slow website – Slow downloading.
If in an attempt to dazzle your web visitor you make use of excessive flash and graphic effects, than most probably the size of the web page will increase many folds, and the web visitor does not like waiting for it get displayed. Make sure that you make minimum use of graphics & flash, and use more of text instead which will enable your web page to load faster and the web viistor will be intrigued and attached to your website if it loads at a faster rate. Also consider that web page loading time is dependent on your web host. Rely on a good web hosting company to provide you with the best web hosting plans.
10. Plugins and font downloads.
You may be excited to use the latest cutting edge technology on your web design. But beware, before you do so. Since the latest cutting edge technology might need some plugins to be dispolayed correctly which you might have on your computer but the chances are that the potential customer visiting your website might not have the plug ins. Asking the web visitors to download something to view your website is incredulously stupid. No one has the time for that. So keept it simple !
If you avoid the above mistakes, rest be assured your website is in the right direction of being a successful website. Web Design Temple, designs state of the art websites. Creative and visually appealing websites are our forte.
Akash Mehra is a famous web
designer, designing websites since the last 12 years. He has been working for
Web Design Temple
Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Web designers should always design websites which are informative and easy to use. A good aesthetic impression also helps and importantly you should always aim for a good user experience which causes web visitors to come back time after time. Even if your are selling the hottest product on the planet if your website is badly designed you won’t be able to sell anything at all because web visitors will be driven away from your site by the unappealing layout or poor website design.
When web designers talk about “good web design”, they don’t just mean good graphic design. A professional web designer will be able to highlight and explain the many components which contribute to a good overall website design. For example, accessibility, W3C compliant code, un-confusing design & layout, user friendly interface, overall user experience and of course not forgetting professional graphic design.
For the sake of enforcing good design standards we can back up our argument by showing or illustrating some bad web design elements which can still be seen on many websites even today. Check your own site against the checklist below and if anything listed below is a feature of your own site its time to hire a Bath website designer to help get your site up to speed.
1) Background Sound
Barring band websites, MP3 music download sites or anything music related… looping background music should always be avoided. It may sound good at first, but just think if you had a larger site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browsed to another page on your website, the annoying background music started playing again? Most visitors are inclined to turn off their speakers or leave your site altogether. What’s more, background music just adds to the visitor’s annoyance when viewing your site… for example, users on dial up will have to wait longer just to view your site and for all your web pages to load.
2) Text sizes which are too big or too small
As we know there is more to good website design than just good graphic design… user friendliness and web accessibility have a large part to play as well. All website text should be legible and reasonably sized to allow your web visitors to read it without a strain on their eyes. Never mind how great your web content is or your sales copy, if it’s not legible you won’t be selling anything anytime soon.
3) Annoying Pop ups
Pop ups or pop up windows (yes they are still out there) and they are so annoying to most users when they display advertisements that most agree they are simply not worth paying any attention to. Consequently most users close them immediately the moment one ‘pops up’ especially if it has gotten past your pop up blocker (most people have these installed these days). Just think about it this way… you have a very important portion of your site to illustrate or a message to convey and you put it in a pop up which simply gets closed 99% of the time when it appears on a web visitor’s screen? Your web site can lose its functionality right there and then.
To conclude, let us remind ourselves that as web designers bath our job is to make sure that websites do what they are intended to do and to do it effectively. It would be foolhardy to allow some very small mistakes from preventing your site from functioning at the optimum level.
Scot Crone works for Totally Ace web design Bath. Totally provide professional web design, internet marketing and digital printing in Bath UK.