The design of a website is an essential component of a business. It creates the first impression for every visitor who comes to the site. Visitors make snap judgments within a few seconds of landing on a site. In fact, statistics show that 75% judge a company’s credibility from its website design alone. These facts can make newbie web designers hurriedly jump on the design process without developing a good foundation for the site.
A lot goes on offline before you start choosing fonts and colors that make a web design accessible. This helps to build an appealing but also functional website for your clients. Look at the common beginner web design mistakes you should avoid.
Not Making Responsive Design a Priority
A large percentage of internet users are on mobile, making a responsive design a necessity. However, a responsive design shouldn’t be considered late into the process but rather right at the beginning. This helps you to have defined breakpoints for the site. Breakpoints appear at different points depending on the type of website you’re designing.
The best practice is to adopt a mobile-first design as it makes a website more versatile and offers more benefits in the design process. It’s much more difficult to simply a desktop version to fit mobile screens than it is from mobile to desktop. Also, the website loads faster when it starts with small assets and CSS.
Lack of an Intuitive Navigation
People get lost all the time in new places that have no clear guidance. A website without clear direction is no different. The navigation is a website’s map to other pages and features on the site. In a bid to have everything in one place, beginner web designers are prone to building huge navigation that brings more confusion to site visitors than guidance.
The navigation needs to make sense to visitors; otherwise, they’ll leave. Common navigation mistakes include placing the navigation bar in an unusual place, auto-hiding, vague labels, and not creating search bars.
Overlooking Accessibility
Accessibility is among the most overlooked features of a website. In failing to design an accessible site, you lock multiple demographics of users from using that website. There are no separate websites for the blind and visually impaired, deaf, motor, cognitive, or people with neurological disabilities. They all use the same sites as everyone else. Â
Designing an accessible website requires considering all users and creating an appropriate website. These are features like keyboard only function, providing alternative text on images, video and audio content, using descriptive anchor texts and links, etc.
Page Elements that Look Like an Ads
Many web users find ads a huge turn-off, especially when they interfere with their navigation, and most will just ignore them. Unfortunately, users will also treat anything, no matter how legitimate, that looks like advertising on a web page. Avoid creating designs with features that look like ads by following these simple design practices.
• Avoid animations — See more on HTML5 flash player: Animations make users ignore any area with flashing or blinking text or any other type of animation.
• Don’t put banners – Users won’t look twice at anything that looks like a banner ad, no matter where it’s placed on the page.
• Keep away from Pop-ups – Pop-ups are quite distracting and annoying and can frustrate users and increase page bounce rates. Besides, they’re a significant hindrance to persons using assistive technologies.
Final Thoughts
Beginner web designers are prone to making many mistakes, but it’s part of the learning process. Remember, the key to a great web design is simplicity. Simple navigation, clean code, accessible and responsive design are among the crucial features a website must-have for an excellent user experience.
