Web designers are prone to commit mistakes while designing a website. Budding designers are more vulnerable to make such mistakes while attempting to implement new ideas. If you are a budding designer or even an experienced professional in web designing you need to be careful and alert for avoiding such mistakes. Many developers are increasingly relying on website templates for minimizing chances of mistakes in designing a site. Let us focus on some commonly made mistakes of web designing.
Websites with background music are rarely appreciated by users. While it may be good for websites promoting music or audio guided tour, the viewers should be given an option of controlling the sound rather than auto-playing from the beginning.
Designing a website involves several critical stages and a designer should be careful about the errors that may happen. While some errors may happen inadvertently some are due to lack of proper knowledge. The tips mentioned above may be followed to minimize chances of mistakes.
Faults in Site Structure
Many designers fail to offer balance between the space occupied by information and white or blank space. Text, images and menus should appear on a contrasting background and distances between the designing elements should give a clean and clear look. Overcrowded web pages fail to hold attention of the viewers. Check out the margin, “padding” style while creating a site.Example of clean web design
Browser Issue
The site should be displayed perfectly with all commonly used browsers. Many designers simply forget to check the browser compatibility or skip it in haste. Web developers relying on website templates often commit this mistake. There are several browsers and each have various versions to complicate the issue. This happens because many users avoid upgrading their browsers. Identify the popular browsers used by the website’s target group and check compatibility of your site with them.Miserable Navigation
This mistake can drive out interested traffic instantly. Visitors look for desired information while visiting a site. The desired information should be maximum three clicks away. Many designers bury the content too deep and frustrate the visitors. Portion of the text and navigational elements should be properly highlighted to guide the visitors. Many designers use unconventional names for Home, Product, About and other sections that can confuse the user. Website templates are great way for small and medium businesses to develop or redesign their site with proper navigational elements in place.Using Flash and Music
Budding designers have a fascination to use Flash and background music. This slows down the response time and page loading is disturbed. Many users don’t have access to high speed Internet connection and need to wait a long time for the page loading. This disrupts the smooth browsing experience of users and they often skip to another site. Website templates using flash should be tested before developing.Websites with background music are rarely appreciated by users. While it may be good for websites promoting music or audio guided tour, the viewers should be given an option of controlling the sound rather than auto-playing from the beginning.
Unlabelled Links
All the links of a site should be properly labeled. This is crucial when you are designing a site from scratch or using any website templates. When this is not followed users get confused about the destination where the link will lead. Grouping similar links with same color or fonts, changing the color of used links, using clearly visible buttons are encouraged. Designers sometimes fail to distinguish the text links within content.Typographical Faults
Using too small or too large fonts creates wrong impression. Messages are best delivered through smart web safe fonts of optimum sizes. Style of the font should not be so clumsy that the user has difficulty in reading or understanding. Experimenting too much with fonts is a common mistake that should be avoided. Using website templates may minimize chances of such mistakes.Images Not Optimized
Images used on a website should be resized or compressed to save space and loading time. When it is not done, images take long time to load and the viewers often leave the site without waiting. Providing thumbnail view and linking those to larger images is a smart solution that many designers fail to implement. JPG, PNG and GIF are commonly used formats. Other formats of images may take a long time to load. When an image or few images are used as background the designer should be cautious about the loading time and level of optimization.Wrong Color Combination
Many designers fail to take into account the purpose of site and target viewers while selecting colors for a site. Colors used for designing a corporate site should be different than a health site. Using contrasting colors or too many colors is a bad practice. Most designers fail to adhere to the principle of using three primary colors. Shades of these complementary colors may be used if required. Many website templates offering excellent color combination may be used as reference.Poor Text Format
Visitors searching for information prefer to scan the content before going to details. Chunks of text repel them. Many designers fail to present content that can be easily scanned. Using bullets, numbers, headings, sub-headings, highlighting with bold or color are some simple steps that are often overlooked. Website templates can be a smart reference point for developing a site.Designing a website involves several critical stages and a designer should be careful about the errors that may happen. While some errors may happen inadvertently some are due to lack of proper knowledge. The tips mentioned above may be followed to minimize chances of mistakes.
