Biggest Web Design Mistakes

Your website may be causing some serious loss in your business, without you even knowing it ! Bad web design is known to put off potential customers away. It is very easy to navigate to some other website if your website does not seem to solve your customer’s problems.

Allow me to give you a simple analogy. Let us assume there is a new super-market in your neighborhood.

The super-market

• is difficult to reach
• is unorganized (nothing is in the place where you expect it to be)
• is not clean
• has unfriendly and annoying staff
• looks unsafe and untrustworthy
• plays really loud and annoying music

Would you like to shop at such a place ? I doubt you will. Even if you enter once, you will make sure you don’t return. And you will ensure that all your friends , colleagues and family members stay away from this super-market, won’t you ?  Effectively, the super-market has lost a lot of potential customers.

And the super-market owner probably wonders why his business is failing. Why the number of visitors is low and why visitors are not returning ?

If you have read our previous post on Important characteristics of effective websites you will know what exactly an effective website should have. In this post, we explore the opposite side of the same coin.

Web Design has been around for a while now. But, many web designers continue to use outdated methods and many repeat the same mistakes over and over.

What are the most commonly repeated mistakes ?

• Forgetting that people don’t care for your business or website :
  If your website does not talk about your customer’s problems, you are doing something wrong. Please remember people do not care for your business or website, they are on your website to solve some specific problem of theirs. Do you go to the super-market because you need to buy something or do you go there because you care for the business or the store ?
• Not making it clear what your website is all about :
  Your website should clearly and obviously make clear what it is about. If you do not make this clear, your customer can easily navigate away to some other website that is easy and clear to follow.
• Using bad design elements :
  Without any doubt, a website has  to look appealing. The layout has to be simple and neat. The text and background colors have to be properly contrasted. The images should not appear too stretched or too compressed.  People hate to see badly rendered images. Overall, the website has to look professional.
• Using a flash intro unnecessarily :
  Trust me, this is a very big put off. Flash intro used to be very cool. But, it ended up being used so badly and in places where it was clearly not needed that it lost its sheen. Would you like to see a cool presentation about the super-market every time you enter it ? Won’t it be annoying and a waste of time ? Avoid this.
• Bad Navigation/Organization and not searchable:
  It is very important to make sure that your website is easily navigable. Imagine how difficult it would be to shop for a particular item if the super-market has no proper organization ? Navigation or Organization is really important.  Also make sure you have a search mechanism on your websites that help users find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very ignored facet of web designing.
• Not reachable easily:
  Unless you are a business like Microsoft or Apple, it is very unlikely that your customers will remember your web address. This means that your website has to be easily searchable through major search engines. Your website should be ranked top for search keywords relevant to your business. This is easier said than done, but it pays if you plan for this from the day you start designing your website.

It will certainly help your business if you keep these points in mind when you get a website designed for your business.

Do a favor to your business and customers and get your website designed by professionals who understand your needs and who help you to improve your business by improving your web presence.