Due to the increase in internet users, having a website is a must. And, it isn’t only about having a website. To survive in this competitive market, you need a website that’s attention-grabbing and helpful to users.
Almost all of your competitors have websites with beautiful appearance as well as great functionalities. If your website lacks in terms of looks or functionalities, you will stay behind.
While browsing, we often come across websites with great visuals, but poor functionality and vice versa. After analyzing thousands of websites, we found many sites with common mistakes. Read on to know the worst web design mistakes.
9 Worst Web Design Mistakes You Should Be Avoiding
Issues with fonts and color schemes
Make sure whichever font family, font style, color scheme, and theme you choose is readable on all devices. If it isn’t, the user experience will be affected and users are likely to bounce back.
Besides making content readable, you also need to make sure it goes well with your brand. When you use so many fonts and color schemes on your website, it can create confusion and can create a negative brand image.
Bad CTAs
CTA (call to action) is a crucial part of marketing. If it isn’t set correctly, the conversion rate will get affected. Even if your website gets massive traffic, without proper CTAs, it would be difficult to convert that traffic into sales.
When designing a CTA and adding it to a particular section, you need to understand the user journey. Sometimes, even some minor changes in CTA (like changing the text, button color, etc.) can increase the CTA significantly.
Slow loading
Let’s face it, a website’s page loading speed impacts user experience and search rankings. The longer your website takes to load, the more visitors will bounce back. Users have a low attention span and don’t like to wait. Ideally, your website should load within 3 seconds (2 seconds if it’s an eCommerce website).
If your site takes longer than that, your web design needs improvement. You can improve page loading speed by optimizing images/graphics, using AMP (accelerated mobile pages), using CDN, minifying HTML & CSS, and removing unnecessary plugins.
Your website isn’t responsive
We often see websites with a great interface on desktop devices, but not so good on mobile devices. Recent data by Statista showed that mobile devices (excluding tablets) generate 58.99% of global website traffic.
As users are spread across all devices, it’s crucial to make the website responsive for all devices: desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Poorly designed images
Visuals play a significant role in web design. With eye-pleasing visuals, you can keep your audience engaged with your website. Great visuals will sustain user attention and will make them spend more time on your website.
On the other hand, the use of poorly designed or irrelevant images can ruin the user experience. With ugly images, visitors are more likely to leave your website without taking any action.
Too many ads
Too many ads can frustrate visitors. After visiting your website and coming across too many ads or some irritating ads, visitors might stop landing on your website in the future.
Advertisements might be your main income stream, especially if you are running a blog. In that case, avoid using irritating types of ads.
A study found that pop-up ads, autoplay video ads with/without sounds, large sticky ads, and full-screen scroll-over ads are some of the most irritating types of digital ads. Displaying these types of ads will also have an impact on your brand image.
Not optimizing for search engines
This is another common mistake we often notice on many websites. What’s the point of having a website with an appealing design, but no one visiting it? It’s not worth it, right?
Optimizing a website for search engines will improve brand visibility. Unlike other traffic sources like social media, SEO (search engine optimization) will drive high-intent traffic for free.
Also Read: How Web Design Affects SEO?
Lacks the right information
Besides email addresses and phone numbers, visitors look for other details like address, business hours, etc. Whatever details you add to your website must be correct. Make sure the phone number is valid and the business address is correct.
Not designing a 404 page
A 404 error is when the user mistypes the URL or tries to visit a webpage that doesn’t exist anymore. Designing a custom 404 page lets users know that there’s an error with their request.
We often come across websites redirecting all 404 errors to the homepage. This may seem a simple and easy solution, but doing so can create a negative impact on a website’s SEO.
404 errors can be frustrating. By designing a custom 404 page and providing the necessary links, you are actually showing a way to come out of that page.
Final Thoughts
Website design is all about improving user experience by adding eye-catchy visuals and eliminating unnecessary elements. It affects user experience, search rankings, and conversion rate.
Some important elements you need to pay attention to when designing a website are visual design, navigation, CTA, content, and page speed.
If you are looking for someone who can design a gorgeous-looking website, get in touch with us at support@encircletechnologies.com
