Like every other professional field, you tend to learn new tricks of website designing by making mistakes. It is often said that if you are not making mistakes, you are not learning. So, making mistakes isn’t really bad if you are not repeating them. And, it is even wiser if you seek and learn from the mistakes that others make like it is always preferred to keep a close eye on your competitor’s move for not only knowing what new things you can try but also for preventing yourself from imitating the things that they are doing wrong.
Here’s a list of some frequent mistakes that even experienced designers make so that you can avoid them for a flawless design – be it in terms of functionality or looks:
1) A chaotic layout of the Content: Don’t present yourself with a messy page as it restricts users from quick scanning. Keep one thing very clear in your mind that an organised hierarchy in design helps you win the game. Don’t ever push your customers into a confusing state where they find it unable to locate the starting point. Offer their eyes a guide through the website and experience the success.
2) Skimpy Navigation: It is always considered a good practice where visitors are aware of their location on the website and have the possibility to flow through the website pages swiftly and freely. Different designers may have a different approach towards this element of the website like pagination or single page layouts. Make sure the navigation you offer on the website is living up to its purpose to guide visitors instead of baffling them.
3) Lean Readability and Plainness: Well, it is known to everyone that readability is the most basic factor but oftentimes designers neglect this aspect in lieu of excess creativity.
4) Poor Contrast and Bad Colours: There isn’t any instant device for this. It is quite important that you should know the colour theory and applying the rules appropriately. If you find your knowledge of colour and contrast unreliable, you can make use of online tools available out there to create a design with the optimal match.
5) Complicated Registration Forms: Nobody likes to fill out a long page of person details that are not even relevant, so you should keep the registration form simple and short. You can also experiment with a tiered approach, asking out information step-by-step rather than asking everything at once.
6) Use of Heavy Media: Higher will be the weight of the website, the slower will be its download speed especially if it is browsed over a mobile device. So to increase traffic on your website, make it lightweight by keeping it away from heavy pictures, animations and flash-based graphics.
7) Unorganised Web Pages: Let the content of your website breathe by providing enough white space. Try to be minimalistic here or deal with the loss of traffic or customers.
8) Being Lazy on Content: Modern shoppers are getting smart. They want to know every detail about the product they are going to invest in. Make sure you are providing them with adequate content. Keeping your website up-to-date with content helps to create an impressive statement as customers can look upon you every time they need updated version of the information required.
9) Improperly Used CTAs: Every website is created with a specific purpose. And providing a clear CTA on the pages will help you stay ahead of others.
10) Irresponsive Website: Modern time is ruled by the trend of going mobile that implies the need of a responsive design so that your website can be accessed on any screen size. If you will ignore this aspect, you tend to lose a potential amount of audience who prefer to access the websites on-the-go.
11) Not Testing Your Website: It is very important to test your website over numerous devices to know its credibility. It also helps you to optimise the performance of your website as you will get to know the things that are restricting your website back from the success.
Now that you got a sorted and researched list, be sure to avoid these mistakes so to deliver an error-free website. If you have noticed any other pitfalls, you can report us about the same and we will come up with another post.
Author Bio: Anna Brown is currently working with Xperts Infosoft – a leading firm for Web Development and Web Design India. She strives to be more intellectual by keep researching on latest stuff about designing and development that serves as an excellent guide to newbie designers and developers.