Anyone who has even an iota of knowledge about web design, understands the fact that there can be huge amount of subjectivity associated with the designing of the web layout. The same design that looks incredible to one pair of eyes, may look like ‘not up to the mark’ – if not a disaster – to another one. This is the reason why it can be a mentally taxing job for a UI/UX designer to get all the design elements right, without coming up with too many iterations. In such a scenario, coming across website design mistakes is not a rare incidence. However, out of the many commonly witnessed mistakes, it is important to know which are the most critical ones that can cost you, your business. We have listed down some of these along with their business implications:
Page Load Time: The biggest mistakes made at the time of designing or redesigning the websites are to add design elements that result in an increased load time. The key behind improving the conversion and retention rates for your website is to have minimum load times for it.
Decreasing page load times can have a dramatic impact on increasing conversion rates for your website as well as decreasing the bounce rates. It is found that most of the users would wait a good 6-10 seconds before abandoning a website. However, a majority of the shoppers expect the shopping website to load in within the first 2 seconds. It can become a trust issue specially when they are here to buy. So, if it does not load within the first 3 seconds, they don’t think twice to abandon it.
Broken Links: Any website that has bad or broken links/hyperlinks which lead the visitors to nothing but the “404” error pages can do more harm to the website than one can imagine. So, it is advisable to test your website & perform this as a weekly ritual so as to ensure that all links work as promised. There can be nothing as bad as a visitor landing on a 404 page. In this case, they are highly likely to abandon your website since this made their experience on your website somewhat bitter. Customers are looking for an easy and pleasant website experience. You should still create a 404 error page just in case an error happens but it should be the last thing to happen.
Don’t Look a Replica of Your Competitors: Your website should never ever attempt to look like a replica of any of your competitors. A website is a unique representation of your brand which should be unique. So, create your own strategy, content copy, messages and build your own brand reputation. Eventually, these things should stand out in your website design, all your marketing communication and promotions. So, don’t try to fit in the crowd, when you should actually stand out.
Too Many Font Styles & Colours: The use of too many font styles and too many colours can make a website lose its focus. While it becomes difficult for one to process the website content with all these diversions, the user experience across a variety of devices gets ruined too. So, it should be ensured that the fonts and colours look good on all possible devices, be it desktops or tablets or mobile phones. It is preferable not to use more than two colours in the website design – one each for the headline and the body text of the content.
Outdated Information: Update your website regularly and weed out any outdated information from it to maintain its credibility. Always make sure that the content is accurate and never outdated, so if you find even a minute error in the content, try to fix it then and there. Such practices go a long way in helping you achieve the best website results. No business, in this day and age, can afford the loss of credibility resulting from dated content.
Responsiveness: A web designer must make sure that the web design is responsive. End users may come from desktop or mobile or tablets so it becomes important to ensure that the web design is responsive.
Out of the many mistakes, a website designer can make, these are the deadliest ones. Want to learn more about the website design best practices? Refer to our blog.
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