Bad website design can ruin your relationship with your users. Our list will show you 5 common web design mistakes and how you can avoid them so that your users won’t want to avoid visiting your site.
If you’re a longtime reader of Buzzhive’s blog, you know how much we value a good website.
After all, your site has the potential to make or break your relationship with a prospective client.
Knowing what to avoid can be every it as important as knowing what to include. Here are five bad website design mistakes that you should avoid making at all costs.
1. Failing to Inform The User
Your website is primarily live for advertising purposes. Therefore, it’s important that you actually do the work and make sure you’re properly advertising your brand.
Never make a visitor guess who you are and what you do.
Within seconds, they should have a clear indication of your name, location, and the services you offer. The faster they obtain that information, the faster you can make them your next customer.
2. Using Unreadable Fonts
Creativity in web design is good. However, as the saying goes, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
It’s important that your website stands out and looks professional, but don’t go overboard. Make sure your choice of font is readable. Stick to standard, black text for all of your copy.
If you’re using colored text or strange fonts, you may as well use Wingdings.
3. Incorporating an Overly Busy Design
Since we’ve already stressed the importance of clarity and creativity, you can probably see where this is going.
Your goal is to inform the user without overloading them with too much information. Throwing tons of images or gargantuan paragraphs at a visitor can do more harm than good.
Minimalism is one of the biggest web design trends right now, and for good reason. Your site should be simple, elegant, and to the point.
4. Autoplaying Audio or Video
Of all the design mistakes on our list, perhaps none is more annoying than autoplay.
We’re not quite sure why so many web designers are obsessed with scaring the daylights out of their visitors, but even Google has started to take notice.
As of January, Google’s Chrome browser will automatically mute any autoplay video, so your audience may not even see it.
Incorporating audio or video into your site isn’t inherently a bad idea. Just give users the option of when they want to start the media.
5. No Mobile Parity
A great mobile design used to be something that web designers could put on the backburner. But now, over half of all web traffic now comes from a mobile device.
As a result, mobile browsing is more important than ever. Make sure that your website scales to a quality mobile experience. Users should be able to obtain the same information at the same speed on a mobile device as they would their desktop.
Avoid These Bad Website Design Pitfalls
The good news is that most of these bad website design mistakes are pretty easy to avoid. Just use common sense and design your site with the user in mind.
And if you’re looking for some help, don’t be afraid to turn to the professionals. Buzzhive Marketing can help you build a website your customers will love.
Get in touch today and schedule your call!