Web Design – Top 10 Mistakes

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Web Design – Top 10 Mistakes

21 April 2009 2 Comments

Whether you are a web designer or a company that owns a website, getting more from your website is one of your key considerations. A well planned and profitable website can help a company to remain ahead of competitors. The quality of web design is an important concern for a company today no matter how small or large the business may be. Almost every company has a website today. And every company wants its website to play an important role in its growth and profits. Customer expectations have increased with time. Consumers today have access to a vast amount of information on the internet. If your company’s website is not able to meet the expectations of your market, you are unlikely to succeed.

Mistakes in web design can cost a company dearly. Whilst it may not be possible to design a perfect website, the risks can certainly be minimized by addressing the common mistakes made in web design. Below you will find ten common mistakes made by Web Designers and Webmasters that may drive your customers away.

Poor Colour Scheme

The choice of Colours on the website is not only important for the visual appeal of the design but also for usability of the website. Lack of contrast between the background and colour and the font colour on the website can make the font difficult to read and have a negative effect on the usability of the website. It is important to keep the colour scheme in mind when designing your web site. One of the popular principles in web design suggests that you should not use more than three colors in the design of your website.

Poor Navigation

Visitors to your website will use the Navigation present on your site to find information that is interest to them. Your own business or your web design company may have a good knowledge of your website and its structure so you may not have trouble locating information. However visitors to your website are less likely to have this knowledge and will rely purely on navigation that is available on the website.

Navigation is mostly available in the form of menus. The menu should be consistent on every page to avoid confusion. Customer behaviours and trends also need to be considered when designing the website. Studies have also shown that web surfers prefer the standard left or right side navigation over other layouts.

Illegible Fonts on the website

Similar to navigation, the fonts used on the website should be consistent on different page. Both, font style as well as size should be consistent. E.g. If your home page content is in Verdana with font size of 10, then you should ensure that all other pages are also the same. There are exceptions to every rule and web design is no different. Sometimes it may be appropriate and acceptable to use a smaller font for disclaimers, terms and conditions, and so on.

Poor and disorganised Content

Content on the website is important and will ultimately influence customer loyalty. One of the most common mistakes is the use of poor quality content on your web pages. Internet users are impatient and do not want to spend more time on a web page that they have to.
It is important to ensure that the content is professionally written and thoroughly proof read. Make sure to break up your paragraphs often and use subtitles and headings where required. Most visitors to your website will scan through the web page hence when your paragraphs are small and separated by logical headings; it will make it much easier for your visitors to read.

Incorrect Semantics

The correct use of semantics is vital o teh design of any professional website. In web design, Semantics refers to the mark-up of the content on the website. It is important that the correct principles and guidelines are applied in the content mark-up on the page. Instead if using in-line font tags the styles should be defined in the CSS document. Similarly it is advisable to use appropriate headings or bold tags within the content. The use of correct mark-up is important to improve usability and also promotes better indexing by search engines.

Contact Information not prominent

Contact information plays multiple roles on a website. Nevertheless it is surprising to find how many websites conceal this information on the website. Contac information should be visible on a prominent palace of the website and be easily visible. It instills confidence in your visitors. This is particularly important for e-commerce website that sell products on the site. It is advisable to have your contact information on every page instead of hiding it from customers who visit your web site.

Long Page Loads or scripting errors

Another common mistake made by web designers is a website that takes long to load on the browser. This is usually when websites are designed with a lot of graphics that have not been optimized. Research shows that if your web site does not fully load within 10 seconds, your files are too large and you should take steps to minimize the load time. Make sure the graphics and videos on the website are optimized properly. Animated graphics can also make the page load page slowly.

Absence of Meta Tags on the website

Meta tags are HTML code invisible to the human eye but used by search engines to collect information about your website. While these don’t have as much of an impact as they used to a few years ago, most search engines rely on this information when displaying your site in the search results.

Promoting the website too early

Another very common mistake website owners make is either promoting their website too early or too aggressively. Some experts advise that any major promotion should be withheld until the website is about two months old. It is better to put more time on writing posts or building content for the website which will add more value in the long run.

Incorrect Resolution

Web designers used to lay great deal of importance on screen resolution when designing websites. Although it is not as important now, not designing with lower resolutions in mind can still cause potential problems in how your website appears on different resolutions.

Different customers have different resolution settings on heir screen. It is advisable to design your website with lower resolutions in mind. If you do this then your website will be more consistent and usable. Although technology has evolved rapidly and most PC screens will be set to a resolution higher than 800 x 600, it is advisable to design your web pages to fit lower resolutions like 800 by 600. If you do this then you will be able to serve a wider user-base without loss of usability or usability.

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2 Comments »

InfernalQuack said:

A main point is missing : Semantic.

For example, titles should be in “h1″, “h2″,… HTML tags

# 3 August 2009 at 7:42 pm

admin said:

As you have rightly pointed out Semantics is an important factor and quite often neglected in websites. I have now added ‘Incorrect Semantics’ as one of the mistakes in the article above. Thank you for pointing this out.

# 8 August 2009 at 4:18 pm