Perhaps you are getting tons of traffic, an unreasonable amount of bounce rate, and a very low conversion rate. Well, these are some ways to know your web design isn’t working. Visitors land on your site but seem to leave immediately because of poor design. Below are the ten most common design mistakes for you to avoid.
Top 10 most common website design mistakes to avoid
They are lots of websites with bad design. A perfect example of a bad website is one that takes too long to load. Here, we will discuss some of the bad things about website design so you can avoid them on your site.
If you want to root out these problems we will tell you about, we recommend that you read How to choose a web design development company.
1. The loading time of the site is very slow
It takes only six seconds for one in every two visitors to your website to leave if it appears to load slowly. And for those who stay beyond these six awful seconds, a slow-loading website makes it difficult for them to navigate through other pages. This defeat the whole purpose of UX, and bad UX signals bad design. Why design the site if users will find it difficult to use?
2. The homepage is overloaded with information
Once a user lands on your website, it takes at most ten seconds for them to decide to stay or leave. From your analytics, a high bounce rate on your homepage may be an indicator that your visitors can’t seem to find what they are looking for. Go straight to the point and avoid an overload of information. Let the service you offer and how you can help your visitors stand out. Don’t have them looking for it. Aim your homepage for conversion, not storytelling.
3. Site design is cluttered or old and not user friendly
We live in a time where design has evolved as much as the internet has. If you fall in the category of business owners who had their websites built during the early days of the World Wide Web, then it is likely you’re still using that good ol’ design.
It’s 2022, not 1995. Old, cluttered, static, and bad website layouts don’t work around here anymore. You need a classic, shiny new design – but not too shiny. No wonder Facebook has been through lots of redesigns over the last 18 years.
Website redesigns are not only meant to make your site look more appealing. They are also meant to improve the usability of your site making them more user-friendly. Sites are for users and here are some design mistakes that you should avoid.
A. Varied Typographies
Using too many fonts on a website can make readability hard. Different font types can make a big visual difference and thus leave your users disoriented. LoopStudio recommends at most three fonts used creatively.
B. Website colors that do not reflect the brand
In any business branding is important. Your website should creatively display your brand colors. You can’t say your brand’s color is green but not have a trace of green on your logo and site. This leaves your business hanging in the air with no clear identity.
C. A terrible menu
Navigation! Navigation! Without this, your site is just a digital roadblock. And you know what happens at roadblocks? – People go back.
To avoid users leaving your site without taking any reasonable action, make it easy for them to move from page to page. Have a noticeable and functional menu with self-explanatory menu items. This gets a user just where they need to be.
4. The contents have too much text and not enough images
We live in a fast-paced world. Internet users have no time to read through long text especially when they are no images making it look potentially uninviting.
This is one of the common web design mistakes.
Web users consume information by scanning. Visitors will scan through your site and decide if you have what they need in only a few seconds. To make it easier for them to find the right information, break long paragraphs into short readable chunks and insert images to make them even more visually appealing.
5. Call to actions are non-existent or difficult to see
If you are serious about conversion, then you should rethink your CTA strategies. Are your call to action buried down the page or are they non-existent? This is a design error that just doesn’t work. Make it clear to your users what you want. Do you want them to contact you or would you rather have their emails? Ask nicely and make it visible.
6. Non-responsive and non-mobile friendly design
Again, it is 2022, not 1995. Nine in every ten internet users access the web with a mobile phone. Web technologies have evolved over the years to permit webmasters to create designs that automatically adjust themselves based on a user’s viewport. This concept is known as “Responsive Web Design.”
If your site isn’t responsive and built with mobile users in mind, then there’s a ton of traffic that you are losing.
We at LoopStudio can make existing sites responsive and mobile-friendly.
7. Impossible to be shared on social networks
The best marketing resource at your disposal is your visitors. Imagine this scenario. A visitor to your site enthusiastically reads your content and is amazed at how much it hits home. She then begins searching for the share buttons but can’t find any. Did you know what just happened? You just lost some free traffic. Ensure your content can be shared. Never make this kind of website mistake. LoopStudio encourages site owners to have sharable icons just above the post.
8. Does not include favicon or site logo
It is very common for messed-up websites to not upload a favicon to their site. A favicon is a small icon that appears on the browser tabs of the website you visit. Adding a favicon or site logo is extremely easy but shabby websites with poor design omit this leaving it empty. For those using a CMS like WordPress, the CMS’s own logo would be displayed as a favicon by default.
9. 4XX and 5XX errors
For visitors to find your website reliable, you must try as much as possible to prevent 400 and 500 errors. 4xx codes are returned when the error is caused by a user themselves while 5xx codes are returned when the problem is from the server. A common 4xx error code is 404 which tells a user they’ve tried to access a non-existence link. One way to prevent such is by configuring your server to redirect every 404 request to the homepage. 5xx errors can be prevented by ensuring your server is functioning properly.
10. Not optimized for SEO
A website that isn’t optimized for search engines will find it hard to pull in organic search traffic. While content is important in SEO, your site design is also important. Search engines take into account usability, responsiveness, mobile-friendliness, loading speed, and other factors that are directly affected by design. We advise you to check out our content on how to improve your web design skills.
Bonus: Not Optimized for Conversion
Little to no conversion is proof of web design issues. A website that is properly designed with all that has been discussed above will surely convert some of its visitors. Good design keeps your visitors on your site and the longer they stay, the more chance you have of turning them into paying customers.
You may be interested in reading: What is design sprint?
Conclusion
Designing is an art, not a science. As a business owner, you aren’t expected to know the ropes of design. That’s what LoopStudio does best. We are a team of experienced web designers. We know design and we do design.
We can take care of your web design needs while you focus on the other things that matter. Get in touch today and give your business website that eye-dropping design it deserves.