8 common web design mistakes to avoid on your site!

In today's world, having an attractive, professional-looking website is essential for building trust with visitors.
It is therefore just as important to know the pitfalls to avoid in terms of web design.

How do you define good web design?

It is difficult to find universal standards that would define good web design. However, there are a few widely accepted approaches among web designers. For example:

• Good web design serves to achieve your objectives.
• It should take simplicity of use into consideration.
• It should highlight the elements of the site and their messages.
• Navigating it should be straightforward.
• It should remain consistent across all pages.
• It should adapt well to smartphone screens.

When these few fundamental "rules" are observed, they enable you to create a site that is pleasant and attractive while improving the user experience.
Let us now look at what does not constitute good web design.

1. Poor readability

Whatever the type of site, content must remain as readable as possible so as not to frustrate visitors.

You may enjoy long paragraphs in novels, but the same does not apply to the internet. Every piece of text must be easy to scan so that users can quickly understand what it is about and whether the information they are looking for is in the lines they are reading.

There are many ways to make your content easier to read. Here are a few examples:

• Break up your pages into subsections, with clearly visible subheadings for each part.
• Write subheadings that are as descriptive as possible. This will allow users to skim the page and stop at whichever subheading is relevant to them.
• Use colour tones that are pleasant to look at.
• Wherever possible, use sans-serif fonts, especially for your body text. It has been proven that sans-serif typefaces are easier to read than serif typefaces — they are particularly easier to read for people with dyslexia.

2. Poor navigation

By definition, a website must offer simple and intuitive navigation. Users should not have to dig around to find the content they are looking for.

This can happen, for instance, when a menu is placed in an unusual location, contains broken links, or is arranged in a disorganised fashion.
Difficult navigation can frustrate users so much that they will leave the site very quickly. The result: a higher bounce rate (the percentage of users who leave the site after visiting only one page) and far fewer conversions (users will not find what they are looking for, or will assume the site has been abandoned and is inactive).

Nowadays, most websites use simple navigation. That said, it is always useful to remind ourselves of the fundamentals:

• Make sure your menu is easy to access. Avoid dropdown menus, hamburger menus, or pop-up menus, except in the case of your site's mobile version.
• Users must be able to decipher the destination and content that each link offers them.
• In the case of a site with a particularly large number of categories, you may need to use a two-level menu. In such a case, make sure the design implies a clear hierarchy between the different elements.

For such a fundamental element, it is easy to take the menu for granted and not think about it too deeply. But it is important to know that its layout and appearance have a significant bearing on the user experience.

3. Unbalanced spacing

Used correctly, the spacing between your elements makes your content stand out to visitors. There is nothing quite like it for guiding a user's eye to exactly where you want it to land.

Spacing is an element to use with restraint, as excess in either direction will quickly become counterproductive.

Overly tight spacing, for example, will give your design a chaotic, cluttered appearance. Users may feel overwhelmed and prefer to find what they need on a competitor's site instead.

Spacing can also help the readability of your content — particularly between headings and the body text. Using images and lists also helps to break up overly large paragraphs. The idea is also to create an organised visual layout.

Whilst extremes are counterproductive, spacing is a simple way to give a site some breathing room and lend it a modern, clean look.

4. A poorly optimised call to action

Calls to action can take many forms (buttons, headers, or even plain text).

Crafting the right message is important for ensuring an effective call to action. Likewise, the placement and visual prominence of a call to action will have a significant impact on its effectiveness.

Ideally, your CTA should be placed at both the beginning and the end of your pages. This will attract both users who are ready to act immediately and those who prefer to read your content before making a decision.
Your CTA must stand out from the rest of your page. This can be achieved by playing with contrast and colour, using a well-designed button, or making the text bold.
Make sure the CTA is easy to interact with and that it can be clicked easily. In other words, it needs to be large enough.

5. Failing to account for the mobile version

Ensuring that your site is fully responsive and adapted to smartphone screens is more important than ever. Mobile internet traffic now surpasses desktop traffic — and this trend continues to grow day by day.

In practical terms, this means that a site not adapted for mobile screens risks cutting itself off from a significant proportion of its traffic.

From a mobile screen perspective, the elements to consider are fortunately the same as for a desktop screen, namely:

• Readability: content must be formatted to adapt to any screen size.
• Navigation: the menu needs to be even simpler given that mobile users have no mouse and a smaller screen size.
• Calls to action: which again need to be easy to spot and click.

6. An incoherent and confusing design

Ideally, your site should present a uniform design with a clear purpose. Multiplying styles and atmospheres from one page to the next can quickly confuse users.

A unified identity — such as a consistent colour palette and a uniform style — will enhance your brand.
Take Facebook as an example. They have used the same style for years — clean and immediately recognisable by its blue-toned colour palette. It may not be the most sophisticated style on the web, but it perfectly achieves its purpose, to the point where we now immediately associate it with the famous brand.

As for what style to use in itself, this will depend on personal decisions, according to the objective and atmosphere you are aiming for. The important thing is that it remains consistent.

7. Too many images and animations

Visuals are a good thing on a website. But as with everything, too much is the enemy of good.

Not only can overloading a page with visuals give your site a chaotic appearance, but it can also impact the loading speed of your pages. In terms of user experience, loading time is very important — a single extra second of waiting can be enough to prompt users to abandon your page. From an SEO perspective, Google does not particularly appreciate pages that are too heavy and too slow to load either.

Furthermore, images must be chosen with care so as not to distract users. The goal is to draw them towards your content, offers, and services through your visuals — not to divert them away with an excess of images.

Of course, every website needs visuals and graphic design work. But it is important to keep in mind the notion of usefulness and relevance in order not to go overboard. For example, images included in an article can serve as illustrations or help contextualise the main idea of the preceding paragraph.

Prefer subtle animations over full-page animations.

8. A contact page that is hard to find

Finally, a detail of considerable importance: the contact section. The goal of a website is generally to encourage users to use your services or products. To achieve this, the contact section is usually indispensable.

It is therefore essential to make sure this section is visible and easy to find. It is often given a classic position in the navigation menu, tucked into a corner. Some sites also place their contact form at the bottom of all their pages, or at least on pages designed to generate leads.

In addition to the contact form, including a phone number and/or email address alongside it can also help those who are reluctant to get in touch via the form.

Do you want to (re)create your website?

Do you want to restructure your site or create one for your new business? Http5000 advises and supports you from A to Z. Content writing, design creation, going live, maintenance, social media presence — share your requests and needs with us and we will find a solution together to create the ideal site.

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