Bad Website Design Features That Could Cause You to Lose Business
No matter how many courses you took at the local community college, how many years of experience you have, or how many things you have learned along the way, these nine bad website design features should be avoided. There are some things that every web designer should avoid if they want visitors to enjoy spending time on their site. You’ve probably heard the term “sticky” concerning websites. This refers to a site that visitors want to stay on. The topic of making a site sticky is something entirely different because so many things go into it. There are, however, a few bad website design mistakes that can turn visitors away from a site. You should avoid the following design mistakes.
1: Jarring Colors
A web page can make a site visitor want to run away if the colors are so bright they hurt the eyes or if the colors clash. Plan your website’s theme by choosing colors that complement one another. Yellow is rarely a useful main color, but it can be a good accent color. As a rule of thumb, using every color of the rainbow isn’t a good idea either. However, using decent color combinations that don’t trouble readers’ eyes can work amazingly. The psychology of color is a fantastic thing to read up on as you plan your website design! Based on your target demographic the colors you choose will differ as well!
2: Too Many Graphics
Two things happen when you overcrowd your web page with graphics. The first thing visitors may notice is that the page is overcrowded, making them uncertain where to go or what they should look at first. Secondly, a slower Internet connection may cause the page to load too slowly. Usually, after 30 seconds, people will move to another site. The world is moving at a rapid pace. The customer could lose interest if you do not grasp her attention within a few seconds. Don’t overload your page with graphics, but only those that are necessary. By doing this, the site will load quickly, look great, and allow users to search for what they are looking for.
3: Slow Load Time
Is your website loading so slowly that a visitor has time to grab a coffee and a donut before returning? If too many elements are added to a website, such as flash, audio, high-resolution graphics, or Java scripts, it may take longer to load. Although most of your visitors will have high-speed connections, there are still rural customers who will only have dial-up connections and cannot access your site if it loads too slowly.
Speed is not only crucial to the user experience, but it’s also a very important ranking factor. It was announced in June 2016 that Google would begin considering your mobile page speed when assessing your search engine ranking factor for speed. Page speed has been a ranking factor since 2010, but since June 2016, it has also been a ranking factor for mobile. Almost half of Google’s searches are conducted on mobile devices, so mobile page speed must be optimized. You can use the GTmetrix website to see how your website is loading!
4: Too Much Advertising
Blogs and content websites make money by advertising instead of selling products. However, many website owners make the mistake of adding so much advertising that visitors cannot differentiate between content and ads. It is best to place one or two ads on the page. Any more and your visitors will become irritated.
5: Amateur Photo Editing
Nothing screams amateur like a badly edited image. Websites with this kind of issue might have distorted images, fuzzy borders, autocorrected colors, and layering techniques that appear to overlap two images or those that have strange proportions. Graphics on such pages have several problems, and visitors get annoyed very often. To avoid such problems, you must have hands-on experience in photo editing. For that, you can use tools like Photoshop or Canva. You can also hire photo editing experts to do the job for you.
6: Poor Navigation
Despite an attractive design, visitors can become frustrated with a poor navigation system and leave. Websites without a clear link or with too many items can be challenging to navigate. Having a small site suddenly grow bigger is a problem many website owners face. Navigation that worked when there were only five pages on the site will not work when there are 500 pages.
When visitors go to the site, they expect to find something, but instead, they see dozens and dozens of links listed down the page and see ads on the right and left. The organizational structure of such sites could be improved, so users can find the information they seek easily. You must restructure and rework the site so that visitors can find what they are looking for. A search box is also a smart addition.
7: Text Issues
The use of busy backgrounds and text colors that do not offer enough contrast causes web pages to appear unreadable. Why would visitors read more pages of your website if their eyes hurt after reading just one article? Choose a text color that clashes with the box’s background color, layer, or content table if you must use a busy background. Don’t mix gray with gray, but choose white over dark red, black over light pink, etc. The same applies to words overlapping one another and paragraphs that are partially overlaid with graphics and partially on solid backgrounds.
8: Typos
Unprofessionalism is evident in typos and grammar errors. It is impossible to be perfect, but you can try. Hire a professional editor to proofread your work to find these errors or ask friends and family to help you find them. You can hire someone on Fiverr to assist with proof reading your content. Your website and business can grow amazingly with professional writing. Therefore important to produce professional-looking and error-free content.
9: Animation
The last bad website design feature is animations. When it comes to animations on your website less is always more. I would recommend hover effects on buttons, links, and images. Anything more than that and your website could detract users from staying on your website! If you use the Elementor page builder you can add these animations in no time! All of our pre-built websites were created using Elementor to allow you to update and maintain your website incredibly easy. You can view them here!