Friday, April 29, 2011

The top 10 web design mistakes - You should avoid for better return against your investment in website building

We all aspire that our websites will return us maximum business against the investment done on those. But it does not mean that we think twice on pouring some extra money to improve the return? No, we are ready to go almost all extends to make it attractive to the user eyes and easy to access.

However we find that our initiates fail! Again in most of the cases we go on pouring money, yet the intended result is not found. Now what are the reasons of this type of problems? There may be many a reason for these failures. But the most effective is the design issue!

We all know that design is the first thing to attract the users to a site. Depending on the success of the design, the other parts can work for sure. Whether it is your ecommerce site to showcase and sell the products or a site through which you provide various services, the design has to leave a mark in the mind of the users.

Anyways, plainly speaking, if you can avoid some great mistakes done at the time of designing the templates or the layouts of the websites, you will save money, time and see your websites going more productive.

Let us now see the top 10 web design mistakes that may pull your initiative to sea:

  1. Browser compatibility: The first and vital mistake that may have a deep impact is the compatibility of the design in several browsers. It is found that either for the lack of experience of the designers or for your hurry the designs are not made compatible to all the popular browsers. Mainly the “Internet Explorer”, one of the most used browsers, creates design break issues. So whatever hurry you are having, do not forget to make design of a webpage browser compatible. Otherwise, users will have a bad impression for your website; being irritated, they may not return again.

  2. Splash page: Try to avoid in having a splash page (introductory page) for your website. Remember whatever beautiful the ‘intro’ is, those take time and visitors have less time in their hands (just 30 seconds in general). They may not push the “skip” button and enter your site to see more relevant information! So concentrate or let the designers put effort on the design of the home page.

  3. The color: In whatever structure a webpage is designed, it has to have the sober color in use. Otherwise, the highly glossy or the gloomy colors may irritate the viewers. Do not try to force your personal taste of colors on the site; better try to go by the purpose of the site. In other words, there are some specific match of colors according to the convention of the designs; say the ‘sky blue’ for corporate, ‘red’ for medical purposes, the multi colors for fashion business etc. The color depth and glossiness should not poke eyes.

  4. Animations and JavaScripts: For making a site interactive designers tend to use the animations. The animations may be of Flash, javascripts, 3D and etc. But remember these the excess use of things should not become bar against the overall performance of the site. Many a times JavaScripts are blocked by several browsers while flash players may not be present in user’s machines; even larger 3D and Flash files take time to load and users see the blank pages! These create bad impression in visitors mind.

  5. Missing contact info & irritating forms: It is very much necessary that the websites prominently put the contact information in proper places. The visitors do not have so much time to find out the contact info; rather they should find it prominent in front of their eyes. Whereas sometimes the contact forms are long and do not work properly and users feel bored to fill them up. So it is necessary that you check out that the contact information is well displayed and several forms are well designed and not long for sure.

  6. Irritating Advertisements: It is evident that the advertisements are needed for sure in a webpage. They bring revenue for the owners of the sites. But does it mean that ads have to irritate the viewers with their wrong placements? Sometimes in the layout structures the ads are misplaced among the valuable information or they are paneled in a way that viewers feel irritated. So try to instruct the designers or understand that proper placements of the ads and relevancy with the page information are a must.

  7. Navigation and link: It is more than necessary that the page navigation menus are nicely designed and the links are properly clear to the visitors. Many a time it is found that designers forget to design the navigation menus properly or use the lengthy dropdowns. On the other hand, the links are designed as images (not texts) which create problem for search robots in crawling your links. Even when there are some links in the body texts the colors of those does not change on clicking for helping the visitors understand the visited links. These mistakes somehow may mislead the visitors. Try to avoid these.

  8. Frames and scrollers and fixed width: Sometimes just for the enhancements of the design the frames are used or for fixed width horizontal scroll bar appear on the user machines. Do you think the users have time to scroll horizontally to know your hidden information? No, many a time they avoid these things. So try to convert your fixed width layouts into liquid layouts (100% to fit all the windows) and do not use frames.

  9. Fonts and text format: Most of the times it is found that the designers do care to use light weight images and graphics but do not care the font size, type and text formats. Due to fixed font size or type the viewers feel uneasy to read the information. At the same time there should not be the use of any font family that is not commonly available in user computers. Tyr to always keep the Ariel, Verdana, Tahoma as default. Again you should look into the paragraph format of the texts. The text should not be in long paragraphs. The bulleted texts and small paragraphs help users understand your business motto.

  10. Pop-ups and new windows: Last but not the least is the unnecessary use of the pop-up and opening of the new windows for explanation purposes. Generally in many cases the pop-ups are blocked in user machines and when users are provided with new windows, they either tend to see those or forget coming to the main pages. So your designs have to use “page refresh” on the same window the users have landed.


However these are the 10 design mistakes that designers many a time happen to perform while they are in hurry to meet the deadlines. If you follow the above points, you will notice that these can be easily be avoided. Actually these may be out of lack in professional attitude of the designers or the companies. Always remember that you have to choose a web design company which is grown to avoid these issues neatly to provide you error free and best design layouts. Same applies in the case of a freelance designer. If you can do so, you will save money and time and you will find that your website is keeping mark in the viewers' mind! Three cheers to your success!

1 comment:

  1. Yes i know about that some time when we are doing web designs .And you provide gerat knowledge of grafic designs.

    ReplyDelete