Your web design can make or break your business. It is way too easy to create pages that will frustrate your visitors than make them stay. Websites that create an unpleasant experience to users are ignored. Visitors will almost always close your site without seeing what you have to offer.
The good news is, the most common web design mistakes are very easy to fix or prevent. Here are some web design tips that you can use to make your website appealing to users.
1. Provide a Compelling/Valuable Content
Although this is not directly related to web design, it is very crucial to the success of a website. A good web design is of no use if your site can’t offer the content that your users are looking for. In short, content is more important than web design.
Basically the reason why a website exists is to provide information to users or interested visitors. If your site doesn’t have content then it is only appropriate to fix this problem first before you actually worry about how to present your site to your users.
Don’t load your website with too much ads. Imagine if there were no TV shows just product commercials? Imagine if magazines have no articles and are filled with print ads? A website must have more content than ads if you want it to be successful.
2. Avoid Sleazy Elements
Examples of sleazy elements are blinking or scrolling texts, animated GIFs or auto-loading sounds. These elements are very distracting and annoying. It makes reading quite difficult for the clients as it can affect clarity of the content and your client’s concentration as well. These elements can also affect your internet connection. In effect, clients who have slow connection will eventually resent the fact that you wasted their time by forcing them to wait for animations and sound files to load against their will. In the end, they will just close your website and move on to the next.
Don’t Use Pop-up windows. We all know that pop-up windows are downright annoying. To think that it would appeal to your visitor’s taste is just wrong. As a website owner, the basic rule is “always put yourself in your visitors’ shoes”. If you hate pop-ups, most probably they do too.
3. Make it Easy to Find
Organize your content so that you users could easily find them. Otherwise, you do your readers a disservice. They should be able to go to their destination with as little clicking involved as possible. Forcing your users to go around your website in a haphazard fashion is going to backfire. The more you can minimize scrolling and clicking the better.
Another important thing is to limit page length to 2 screenfuls. Although is true that you must put a lot of substantial information on each page, extending it to 6 to 7 screenfuls is going too far in another direction. For very long articles that may take more than 6-7 screenfuls, you can chunk them into separate pages.
Further, always include a way for your users to get back to the homepage, on every page. This way, they will not get lost if they find themselves in pages that they want to get out of. You can either add a clickable logo with a text that says “Home”.
A Menu on every page will also be extremely useful. This way, they won’t be forced to go back to your homepage each time they get lost or before they can go somewhere else. Navigation links shouldn’t be placed at the bottom of each page because users will have to scroll down just to get there, except when you have very short pages. For websites with long pages, navigation elements should be placed on both the bottom and the top or left side of the page.
