The substance of your website is by far the most important aspect of your site but you can’t over look it’s design either. Today we’re going to cover some of the common mistakes made in site design:
Unintuitive navigation
If people can’t navigate your site, they won’t be able to access all of your content. A good design always has the navigation in the same location regardless of what page a user is on. If a user has to guess how to navigate your site, you’re doing something wrong.
Slowness
This is sometimes caused by large images, animations, javascript or 3rd party widgets. A slow site usually frustrates users and will cause them not to spend a lot of time on your site. When designing your site, pay attention to how quickly the design loads. Also, pay attention to your UI effects. Sure that animation of the menu sliding downwards is cool but if a user has to wait a full second or two each time they access your menu, it’ll quickly stop being “cool” and be more of a nuisance.
Crowded layout
Trying to squeeze too much on a page is a bad idea. It’s the kitchen sink approach – hoping readers will see something that they like. The problem with this approach is that a lot of times, people will be overwhelmed with the amount of content and just ignore all of it. A layout that directs readers to the top 2 or 3 most important things is usually best.
Sloppy sites
These sites have missing images, broken layouts, unaligned images, or badly broken up content. Remember those horrible MySpace pages with colorful backgrounds where you could barely read the text? Bad idea. Make sure to spend some time polishing your site and viewing it through a readers eyes.
There are many more pitfalls to avoid but we’ll leave it here for now.
When it comes to good design, always keep your target audience in mind. It’s better to be focused on what will work with your core audience than try to be everything to everyone.
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