Blog » 6 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid
6 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid
What do you expect your website to do for your business? If you’re like me – and I bet you are – the ultimate goal of your website is to drive more business through your door. Whether it’s an e-commerce site, an outbound marketing site used to generate leads, or an inbound marketing site designed to establish your authority, the real reason to have a website is to promote your business. Did you ever consider you website might be losing business for you?
Poor website design will drive your customers away. While it might seem odd to hear a copywriter talk about the importance of design, I know a poorly conceived and implemented website will pretty much guarantee no one will ever read the web copy. It’s in my own best interest to share some of the more annoying attributes that could be losing you customers.
Music
When I took to Twitter complaining about websites with automatic music on them, I immediately received eight replies confirming it was a bad idea. Every person said they immediately leave a site with music. Me too.
Automatic Video
Nearly as annoying as music, websites that automatically download and play a video also raised the ire of the Twitterverse. Video is a great addition to any website but let people decide if they want to play it or not. Don’t worry, people love to do things on a website. More than that, they like to be in control of their own experience.
Flashy Stuff
Unless you’re running a special effects company, avoid Flash and flashy features on your website. People visit your website to get information. When they have to deal with flipping tabs, new windows opening with every click or icons tumbling around the screen they give up and go somewhere else. Don’t you?
Small Print
Cramming more content onto a page by reducing the font size might sound like a great idea. It’s not. If you want people to read, make the type easy on the eyes.
Poor Colour Choices
Colour can be subjective and I’m not about to start a debate about it. However, if your print is similar to the background colour, you won’t have many people reading your page. Grey on grey, yellow on silver and red on purple are all difficult to read. Don’t do it.
Busy-ness
More is not always better and that’s certainly the case for websites. Position your content so it’s the obvious feature on the page. Filling up every bit of space with images and copy detracts from what you’re trying to accomplish.
This is a relatively short list of pet peeves but every one of them is guaranteed to provoke your prospects to move to another site before they’ve even read a word. Your website needs to support the goals of your business, not the whims of your web designer. Ensuring your website “looks” attractive will give you a better chance to influence your current and potential client base.
What annoying features make you abandon a website?
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*Image courtesy of briannaorg at www.flickr.net
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Thanks very much, Alastair. Your comment reminded me of another pet peeve with website design. I was looking to purchase flowers for a friend in the hospital last night. About 20 seconds after I opened the home page, a talking woman popped up interrupting the paragraph I was reading. I shut the whole site down in an instant.
If I wanted to speak to someone, I would have phoned.Posted by Sarah Mitchell, 04/08/2010 8:12pm (2 years ago)
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Great points.
Clean, well presented content is massively important.
I (and I think most people) have a surprisingly high tollerance for websites that they don't particularly like the look of. But sites that interupt me with Audio or where the content I'm looking for isn't easy to find and easy to read. That will get rid of people quickly.
Posted by Alastair, 04/08/2010 4:15am (2 years ago)
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Hi Doug,
You raise a good point about the website meeting the purpose of the company. I agree there is a time and a place for wizardry along with fun and games. You've given good examples of when and where it makes sense.
I've seen too many examples of poor usage though - the accountant with cascading tiles, retailers with obnoxious music and property companies with icons whizzing all over the screen. It makes me think the web designer had some new tricks they wanted to try and had no regard for what the business was trying to accomplish.
Thanks for lending some valuable examples to this discussion.Posted by Sarah Mitchell, 30/07/2010 4:06pm (2 years ago)
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Nice post. I do think some of these depend on the goals.
If I go to a car site, I want sexy flashy zoomy swoopy stuff. I'm not just there for the data. I want to be romanced.
For a media company, a busy site packed with goodies is what I expect.
But I do agree that tiny type, illegible color combinations and un-invited tunes are always annoying.Posted by Doug Kessler, 30/07/2010 6:30am (2 years ago)
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Wow, Hayley! Thanks so much for your considerable and considered contribution to this post. You've given me a lot of great information. I love the website grader and use it to track improvements on my own site. I look forward to checking out the color scheme designer site soon. Thanks for stopping by.
Posted by Sarah Mitchell, 29/07/2010 7:23am (2 years ago)
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As a web design professional I totally agree with you, Sarah. The whole point of a website is to get people involved in your business, not scare them away.
Unfortunately, some colour schemes can be frightening. A good place to start with colour is to go to a colour wheel and choose colours that actually fit together. Check out this tool, http://colorschemedesigner.com, it's a fabulous resource and a great place for getting your colours looking like they go together. I always send my client's here as a first port of call when starting a website for them. As a girlfriend who is an interior designer once told me, create a canvas on which to paint with splashes of colour. So the more plain the canvas, the more colour you can introduce in each page or post without it clashing.
I also think that flash has its place but it can definitely be overdone and if it is constantly drawing your eye when you're trying to read that's mega annoying and distracting. Use the KISS principle.
I'd also like to add a couple of pet peeves I have and one of them is a disorganised site. If I have to click loads of times to get to where I wanted, then I'm not going to stay long. A clearly organised site is always a winner, just as well spaced text that has some highlighting or headers to help me get the gist of the page quickly.
And finally tip of the day, if you want to know just how well or bad your site is, pop over to http://websitegrader.com and enter in your website url. In a flash you'll have a grade out of 100 that will tell you how it is faring in comparison to all the other websites that have been graded. It will also give you some tips on how you could improve your site. A great tool I think.
For more info, you could pop over to my site, http://thecreaticians.com where I offer a holistic approach to web design and business support.
HayleyPosted by Hayley Solich, 29/07/2010 6:48am (2 years ago)
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