Today your website has the potential to be the first introduction of your brand or even your business itself. A good website design is one that will attract attention from its visitors, encourage trust amongst the visitors and influence them to make a purchase. Yet, one or two mistakes made in the design of your website can lead potential customers astray and affect your credibility. 

To assist you design your website to be helpful and intuitive, this blog outlines five typical errors to steer clear of.

1. Ignoring Mobile Optimization

As mobile devices have taken over and over 50% of the internet traffic is provided by mobile devices, a mobile responsive website design has become a necessity. If they don’t properly address mobile users, the usability will suffer, as will the site’s standing in Google.

Mistake:

• Some of the texts or images that are provided in the site are too small or seem not rightly aligned.
• Depending on design, navigation menus are almost entirely unmanageable on small screen sizes.
• Creating unique interfaces for smartphone devices that take too long to load a particular page.

Solution:

• Select a layout that changes depending on the size of the device a user has chosen for accessing the site.
• You need to check how your site looks on different devices and monitors and also in different browsers to avoid great differences.
• This notion should be executed by emphasizing the mobile-oriented approach to the development of the website.

2. Complicated Navigation

This means that when it comes to the usability of your website it is supposed to be easy to navigate. However, this is something that should not make guests fight to search for various information. Having too many links in your website or having multiple sub menus can deter the user and they will leave your website.

Mistake:

• Cluttering: providing customers with too many menu lists at once.
• The absence of a Call To Action (CTA) at the upper fold.
• Hyperlinks Failure or pages that result in page not found errors}

Solution:

• Make sure to keep your navigation easy to follow with short and to the point labels.
• The number of main menu items must not exceed five to seven in order to prevent confusion.
• Make a drop-down search bar to aid navigation to content.

Make it your habit to check for non-working links on your website and update them instantly.

3. Slow Page Loading Time

It is noteworthy that users are increasingly impatient and expect a website to load in a few seconds at most. In addition to causing annoyance to visitors a slow loading website also provokes your search engine ranking.

Mistake:

• Large, uncompressed images.
• Use of many plugins and slow running scripts.
• Poor hosting services.

Solution:

• Reduce the size of images by slimming it down but retaining the image’s quality.
• It is advised not to use more than one .JS or .CSS file per page or if possible use only one.
• Choose a credible web host and turn on the browser cache to reduce the time taken to load pages.
• Run a check on your own website loading speed with Google PageSpeed insights or GTmetrix and apply the recommended changes.

4. Overloading the Design

Despite the fact that it is possible to use more creativity when designing websites, this can cause overloading of the website’s elements. Complicated layout and structure is not only aesthetically unpleasant, but also hinders the perception and prioritization of crucial information.

Mistake:

• Using multiple font types, colors or animations at the same time.
• Overcrowded pages with an excessive number of words or pictures.
• A major issue of the design is that there is no white space between most of the items contained in it.

Solution:

• Always remember to follow a certain design theme and limit the means of inspirational fonts to 2-3 alongside the color theme.
• Lack of complexity by having the aesthetic design of objects include only the relevant aspects.
• Applying blank areas purposefully to visual separation among the elements and minimal cluttering of the layout.
• Do not use parts such as autoplay videos, or animations that can help distract or even frustrate visitors to the website.

5. Lack of SEO and Accessibility

Of course, the website should be visually attractive; however, if users cannot find it, that money and time is wasted. In the same regard, failure to incorporate the concept denies a large chunk of the audience a chance to access your information, perhaps due to a disability.

Mistake:

• A lack of meta tags, failure to write alt text for images, or having improperly constructed headings.
• Keyboard accessibility not being supported or being partially supported for the disabled.
• The low contrast color combination that makes reading difficult.

Solution:

• You should always add meta tags, alt text, and correct heading tags (H1, H2, etc.) to make it easy for search engine tools to crawl your website.
• Your website should conform to essential accessibility standards (WCAG) – some of these include, use of keyboard navigation and alt descriptions.
• Aim for contrasting colors that the text and the backgrounds are different.
• Make sure you update your website consistently or frequently and check its rank on the search engine.

Conclusion

Having a well designed website lays a strong foundation for the creation of consumer traffic and customer loyalty. This sounds obvious, but they are frequently overlooked: failure to address mobile optimization, complex navigation, slow loading times, excessively cluttered layouts, and SEO and accessibility issues will all sink your website. Bear in mind that your Internet presence is as much a representation of your company as is your logo. Take your time and effort in doing things right, and the results you want will come back to you. Don’t simply have a website that places your company out there on the internet but a tool that fosters and propels your growth.