5 Simple Mistakes In Website Design and Presentation
There are billions of websites on the internet, offering all kinds of information. There are many factors involved in creating and maintaining a good website, but here are the top five website design mistakes webmasters make:
Inconsistency
Don’t toy with users’ expectations by constantly changing fonts, colour schemes, system design, etc. Not every page on your website needs to be exactly the same, of course, but the design should be consistent across the board. Keep the same colour scheme and don’t change the lay-out too often. When you do make changes, try to make them small and purposeful. Warn your visitors ahead of time about any major changes (“X Website will undergo a rebranding soon…” etc.).
Poor Ad Placement
Nothing annoys a website visitor more than ads that obscure or overpower the information they’re looking for. Ads need to be visible but they don’t need to take over. Avoid the kind that use slow-loading Flash or automatically play videos or audio clips. Also, make sure that the ads are truly relevant to your website content and user demographic. A work-at-home parent wants to see ads for diapers, parenting advice, family vacations, and so on, not sexy singles.
Bad Navigation
Visitors to your website should always be able to find the information they need, when they need it, without a lot of hassle. Easy navigation is crucial to gaining repeat visitors and lowering bounce rates. For this reason, you should have a simple search box clearly visible on every page. Important information — about us, contact, FAQ — should be easy to find. Include a site map for users, as well.
Slow-To-Load Homepages
If your homepage doesn’t load right away, what’s your bet that a visitor won’t stick around? If your home page is clunky and takes time to load completely, most users will click out and go look for what they want elsewhere. Most of them want information and they want it now. You should be able to give it to them in 3 seconds or less.
Unclear Links
When text is used as a link, it should always be apparent. The standard is colored, underlined text. To avoid confusing readers, subheadings and keywords that are not links should be italicized or bold, not underlined. When a link has been clicked, it should change color to notify readers. Links to outside webpages should open up in a new browser window, but in-bound links should not.
There are of course many other aspects to consider when designing and building your website. You may find it useful to request a website design agency to audit your site, or go directly to your users for feedback.
Graeme is writing on behalf oneagency.co, a Web Design Agency & Website Development
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