Website design is the centerpiece of any website and builds a brand's virtual presence. It includes planning, conceptualizing, and arranging content in a website. If a website doesn't have a good design, it hurts the visitors. Even if your website has useful content, you won't have good visitor retention and turnarounds. Most new businesses don't focus on website design and try to save money. Sometimes startups to save money get amateur web designers, which results in various common website design mistakes. Fixing the website design mistakes helps you gain more customers and provides an edge over your competitors.
Top Website Design Mistakes of 2021 to Ignore in 2022
We have compiled a list of common web designing mistakes that can be averted and prove to be beneficial for your company's overall growth. Read on to learn more.
Poor navigation
Navigation is an essential element in a website. But most of the time, it is ignored. Due to poor navigation, users find it difficult to find content on your site, and it also takes the valuable time of the user and makes them frustrated. So next time, they ignore visiting such a website. Many times, the navigation menu is placed in the wrong location. One must follow the conventional location for the navigation menus, and visitors to your site will find it easier to locate and use.
Sometimes lots of links are added to the navigation menu. But the navigation menu should be kept simple, and only the important links should be added. Too many drop-down menus are also not very good. Users find it difficult to navigate through it. Graphical and button-based navigation is old-fashioned now, and it not only takes a long time to load, thus, reducing the page speed. Link-based navigation is best to use as they load faster, increasing the loading speed of your website. Poor navigation impacts the ranking of a website in Google.
Slow page load speed
Your website must load fast. By fast, we mean super fast, and it must load in less than 3 seconds. People are not patient enough, and they don't wait long for your site to open. If your website takes longer to load, people can jump to the next website. And this is the major reason for the increase in the bounce rate of a site.
Website Mistakes Made by Most Beginners
Here are some websites mistakes that beginners make:
1. Unoptimized images
The website loading speed depends on the size of the webpage. High-resolution images have large sizes. So, the images should be compressed before uploading. The image format is another thing that should not be ignored. You should mostly use jpg and web format images on the website.
2. Unnecessary javascript file
Javascript is useful to add dynamic content to the website. But if used in excess, it can significantly harm the loading speed of a site. Javascript takes a lot of time to get loaded, interpreted and executed. So limited and important Javascript files should only be used, and unnecessary Javascript files should be removed.
3. Wrong theme
When it comes to the website loading speed, ' Theme' has a vital role. Some of the themes are very bulky, and their codes are not optimized properly. Using light themes makes your website load faster.
So, these are among the top 3 website design mistakes that a newbie generally makes.
There is another mistake that often happens unintentionally but can have a severe impact on the overall website performance.
4. Absence of 404 error redirect
When a user mistypes your site URL or clicks on the link of the deleted post, the user gets a 404 error. This results in a bad user experience, and this tarnishes your website's reputation and makes people think that the website is fake. If your webpage gets a 404 error again and again when a user clicks on it, then Google decreases the ranking of that webpage and negatively affects the website.
A website should have a dedicated 404 redirect page to be redirected there if they encounter any broken link. Else there are various plugins available which you can use to fix this. Some of the plugins that can be used in WordPress are WordPress Ultimate Redirect, 404 to 301, 404 Solution, WP 404 Auto Redirect to Similar Post, 404 SEO Redirection. You need to install any of the mentioned plugins and activate them. The plugin will automatically redirect your broken links to similar links of your sites so that they can get something similar to read.
5. Use of improper font, font size, and color
This website design mistake is common in most beginners. Some designers use too many font families, while others don't know the importance of different font sizes and colors. Fonts are integral parts of a website, and choosing the wrong font harms the usability of a website.
Some websites use too many different types of font families, and this doesn't seem very clear to look at and is not a good SEO practice. More than two font families should not be used ideally. Instead of using different font families, you should use the same font with different font-weight, enriching the user experience. Font size hierarchy is important to understand heading, subheading, and normal text to the users.
Different colors are suited for different websites. Such as health and wellness websites should use light color shades and sleek and legible fonts for visual interest in their website. Many designers don't focus on these minute details. More common health and wellness website design mistakes include bad logos, no specific call to action, too many annoying ads, lack of public testimonials, etc.
Conclusion
These are the 4 most common website design mistakes to avoid so that your website doesn't fall in the category of a bad website. Website designing is a tedious process, and it's not easy for a beginner. But it's not that hard, and anyone can master it with consistent efforts. One can easily eliminate these websites mistakes by following the steps mentioned above. Most people may think that these errors are very small. But these things strongly impact your website's google ranking and the trust among your users. As the presentation of your content comes first before your content. So, a person will only visit your website if you make its design simple and easy for the people.
Latest Articles