8 Beginner Web Design Mistakes You Ought To Avoid

“There are three responses to a website design- yes, no, and Wow! Wow is the one to aim for.”
–Milton Glaser

Web designing entails certain traps for beginners. And when these traps are overlooked by the web designers, it leads to not-so-good experiences for users, which cause a considerable loss of website traffic.

There are many websites that botch up the web designs and beginners are led astray when exposed to such unsuccessful web designs. Well, web design mistakes are not only made by beginners or amateurs. Sometimes big brands and professionals even end up committing such web design mistakes. Is your web design agency also a culprit in committing such blunders? Check out!

Web Design Mistakes You Ought To Avoid

The crux of the plight of web designing lies in the approach of beginners. There are times when these inexperienced web designers fail to realize that the website needs to be designed for the users to access it.

So it is vital for beginners to prioritize usability and utility rather than creativity.

Here, the 8 beginner web design mistakes are pointed out. Check it for yourself but once you are done with it do not forget to run a background check.

1) Overlooking the business goals when creating the web design

Mistake:

This has been almost every time that the web designer has settled down to design a website and forgot the main goal of creation itself. The beginners often overlook the business goals and concentrate on embellishing the website.

The entire concept of web designing goes wrong here. A website is designed to meet business goals that include luring the maximum online traffic to the site and increasing sales by providing the users with a great user experience (UX). A web designer should focus on the business goals of improving the accessibility of the site rather than working on its beautification.

Suggestion:

In order to avoid this mistake, you need to approach the designing of the website, keeping the business goals in mind. First, decide what the website owner aims to achieve through the site and then find out what is the most vital goal for the site. You can work further on what tools to avail for achieving the business goals and create the design based on those particular goals.

2) Neglecting the typography of the site and giving preference to the design

Mistake:

It has been viewed that many web designers keep the notion of typography aside while focusing on the designing of the website. And as a result, first, the website is designed and then the typography is fitted in to suit the design.

It is high time you realize that this is a beginner web design mistake you should definitely avoid. The presentation of the content of your website is much more important than the design surrounding it.

Users may not pay so much attention to the header, logo, etc. if the typography is not appealing enough. Even though it’s quite surprising, typography is one of the major tools of content presentation of your website and if the designers do not work on it, the website will soon start losing its online traffic.

Suggestion:

The Typography of the website should be given preference over the website design. In fact, the typography should be enhanced by the designers whereas the website design should be customized to compliment the typography.

3) Incorporating frequent modals and pop-ups

Mistake:

We all are guilty of bombarding users with popups and modals as soon as they land on our website. When a user is surfing through your website, and frequent modal windows and pop-ups constantly keep appearing, it gets on their nerves.

The act of incorporating modals and popping-up windows on your website as soon as a user lands on your website seems to be very desperate.

The models also ruin the user’s experience by intervening in their research. So if you do not rectify this mistake, then users will not think twice to switch to competitor websites.

Suggestion:

The very first thing to keep in mind is that do not incorporate modals and pop-ups at frequent intervals and make sure the models are definitely not the first thing that the users view while entering your website.

It is pointless to redirect users to different blog posts and advertisements and interrupt their research. If any user is interested in any advertisement then they should be free to click on them at their disposal. It shouldn’t be imposed on them by such modal windows and pop-ups.

Also Read: Content First Design Approach

4) Bad legibility and readability of the website

Mistake:

There has been many a time when beginners got so engrossed in designing the website that they almost forgot to keep a check on the readability and legibility of the site. Some websites look attractive but they repel users the very next moment due to the poor readability of the content displayed on the website.

Some designers lack the knowledge of which colors would complement and highlight what kind of font style and font color of the text.

What font and style of text are highly noticeable and readable in what kind of background should be known by the web designers? If the users are not able to view or read or comprehend the text of the website, then the entire purpose of setting up the website goes in vain.

Suggestion:

To improve the users’ reading experience you can study other major sites’ color schemes and patterns. You can also use Adobe Kuler to experiment with varied color schemes and improve the reading experience of your website.

You can resort to Sans serif typeface which allows easy reading on the web, as well.

5) Availing too much Whitespace remover

Mistake:

Are you using too much Whitespace remover for the designing of their website? Too much use of the Whitespace remover makes the website appear dense and cluttered all over with texts, tabs, buttons, checkboxes, comments, etc.

Whitespace remover is an important tool for web designing but going overboard with it only hampers the web design, making the legibility of the site poor.

Suggestion:

The Whitespace remover should be used appropriately to highlight certain portions of the website, a few texts, and images so that the user experience is improved by a better user interface design.

The tool which enables designers like you to highlight and enhance the efficiency of any website shouldn’t be over-used to suffocate the site with excessive attributes.

6) Using stock copy for the website

Mistake:

Paying attention to stock copies and using them for your website is a mistake that should be avoided. Stock copies always do not end up tuning with the website design and hence, you are sure to face the problem.

Suggestion:

The web designer should prepare the majority of the copy before designing the website or at least should have the framework of the copy created beforehand. This would help effectively in the designing of the website.

7) Too much use of images and animations

Mistake:

Using too many images and animations on your website can test the patience of the users and result in a loss. It is a mistake to go overboard with unnecessary images and long-stretched animations.

It is beneficial to attract the user’s attention but too much of it is distressing.

Suggestion:

Use images where it is necessary or where the users need to view a few things in order to grasp the meaning of any text.

You can also add animations to your website but it should be kept optional by providing the ‘Skip’ button.

8) Neglecting the need to design for the mobile devices

Mistake:

Web designers fail to give priority to the designing of the website for mobile devices. And as a result, the website doesn’t load properly on the mobiles and forces users to punch in and punch out to adjust the text.

Suggestion:

Instead of neglecting it, the website should be designed primarily for users to view it on their mobile screens. As per a ComScore report, 60% of the online traffic comes from tablets and smartphones.

So it is high time you start designing sites in a way that is easily accessible on mobile screens. Images and texts should be uploaded within seconds on the screens as users do not wait for long minutes for pages to get uploaded.

Conclusion:

After a quick overview of beginner web design mistakes, it is quite evident that the main point lies in the simplicity of web design. Hire experienced web designers to improve your website design and make it all more user-friendly.

The simpler and more uncomplicated website you design, the more users will flock to your site. You must understand the basics of programming so that you don’t lose out on your customers and sales as it can largely affect your business. Keep in mind the most common mistakes as mentioned in this article and keep working hard on your website to make it more and more user friendly.

Keep it simple, follow the guidelines and steer away from these common mistakes.