9 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid

Whether you’re trying to create your own website from scratch or hired a web designer to build it for you, familiarizing yourself with the most common web design mistakes is important.

Your website is one of your strongest assets, particularly when it comes to maintaining a solid online presence and delivering an exceptional user experience for your customers. That’s why you need to make sure it’s beautiful, functional, clutter-free, and user-friendly.

Alright, now let’s check out the top web design pitfalls and how you can avoid them.

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1. Too Many Visual Elements

A website with too much going on will surely leave your visitors confused. With so many design elements scattered here and there, it may not be easy for your customers to find what they need or even learn what your business is about.

Not to mention, asking your web designers to add tons of images, ads, animations, text blocks, and videos to your website will make it as slow as a snail, which is probably the easiest way to steer your customers away.

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2. Exaggerated Minimalism

Just like how busy websites can hurt your business, overly minimalistic websites may be even worse.

Some business owners try to avoid complicated websites so much that they barely add anything to their website, which can create as much confusion for their visitors as a cluttered website.

Keep your website simple, visually appealing, and clean while also delivering your message in an upfront and easy-to-understand way. Guide your customers throughout the website and tell them what to do next and how to do it. Avoid forcing your customers to guess anything.

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3. Your Website Takes Too Long to Load

In this day and age, internet users expect websites to load almost instantly, especially on mobile. If your website’s code is bloated, the images are in legacy formats, and you have tons of ads on every inch of your website, it won’t likely load quickly.

This results in lost opportunities and frustrated customers. Not to mention, a slow website is much less likely to rank high in search engines, which can damage your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) even if you do everything else right.

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4. Complicated User Interface and Insufficient CTAs

When designing a website, it’s important to consider how the user will be able to navigate it with usability testing.

Ideally, your website visitors should find what they need as quickly as possible without having to go through countless menus and clicking dozens of buttons.

It’s also important to create a “journey” for your website’s visitors. Think about what you want the user to do when they visit your website and simplify the process for them. Avoid assuming that your customers already know about your store.

For instance, if you run an e-commerce store, customers must learn about what you do the moment they visit your website. They should be able to see all the products and their categories and navigate through them easily with simple sorting and filtering tools.

In addition, you need to ensure that the checkout process is easy and straightforward even for first-time customers. Follow the simple “3 click rule”, which assumes that customers are more likely to leave your website if they can’t find what they need after 3 mouse clicks. You can do this by adding Call to Action (CTA) buttons that tell the user what they need to do next.

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5. Your Website Isn't Mobile Friendly

Mobile users account for roughly 50% of all web traffic. Still, many website owners neglect the importance of responsive web design when designing their websites, which is probably the most critical web design mistake you can make.

Responsive web design makes your website look good and easy to navigate and skim through on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

So if users can barely read the text on your website because the font is too small, don’t be surprised when they run away from your website.

On top of that, Google has constantly advised webmasters to follow a mobile-first approach, which also means that a mobile-friendly responsive website is more likely to earn better visibility in search results.

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6. Neglecting Web Analytics

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

If you already have a website and are seeking to revamp it, overlooking your website’s user analytics means that the project will fail before it even starts.

User research analytics give you in-depth insights into how users interact with your website. This includes the elements they click on, the places where they’re more likely to bounce off your website, areas where they spend more time than usual, and other insights. Is that ringing any bells? Yes!

When revamping and optimizing your website, your goal is to provide a better user experience for your website visitors to boost engagement, reduce bounce rates, and maximize conversions.

But if you don’t know what parts of your website frustrate or delight your visitors the most, the whole process will be based on personal judgment and assumptions. Remember, you’re not building a website for your business; you’re building a website for your customers.

Google Analytics is a widely used analytics platform that you can integrate into your website to track user behavior.

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7. Missing or Inappropriate Alt Text

Alt text is added to website images to provide context for special needs users or people who have a connection that’s slow enough to be incapable of loading all the images. It’s also used to describe the image for search engine web crawlers that crawl and index your web pages.

Neglecting alt text can result in a negative user experience for your visitors, which can also hurt your search engine rankings. An accessible design, on the other hand, will boost your conversion rates.

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8. Hiding Your Contact Info

You can blow your potential customers’ minds away with a fancy website full of eye candy and animations, but if they can’t find your contact info fast enough, your efforts will go in vain.

If you run a service or consultation-based business, your contact page should be one click away. You can also spread some “contact us” CTAs throughout your website’s content so when a user is ready to make a decision while scrolling through your content, they can reach out to you quickly. Making your contact info visible also supports your website's credibility.

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9. Readability Problems

Making your website easily readable on desktop and mobile devices is essential for providing a great user experience.

Try reading the content on your website yourself, and if you start noticing that you’re straining your eyes or trying too hard to read everything, then you’re likely dealing with a font problem here.

Make sure your fonts aren’t small, inappropriately colored, or don’t contrast with your website’s background. You should also ensure that the font auto-adjusts based on the device’s screen size.

Additionally, try to use whitespace appropriately to draw attention to your content. Avoid adding text to every square inch of your web page; instead, center your content within decently sized white space borders to make it less intimidating. Breaking up large walls of text is important too.

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Conclusion

That’s all for today! If you want your website to actually drive results, avoid the mistakes listed above, period.

If that sounds like too much work for you, reach out to us to discuss how we can help you design a professional website that reflects your brand and delivers your key message effectively.