4 Common Mistakes in Web Design

Running a business without a website in 2020 is like trying to ride a bicycle without wheels. There are certainly ways to make it work, but you're making life needlessly difficult for yourself. In the digital age, having a website is vital, but it's not simply a matter of opening a Facebook Business Page or taking an hour to work out how website building platforms work. Many business owners understand the need for strong design on their website but continue to make mistakes when it comes to actual implementation. It can be very challenging to master website design, so here are some tips that might make it easier to not just get a website that looks good, but performs at only the highest levels.

Lack of responsiveness

People look at the internet in many different ways and on many different devices. Before you even start to finalise plans about colour schemes and font choices, you need to ensure that your web pages can be viewed easily on everything from a PC to a phone to a tablet. Responsive design is, put simply, the single biggest issue in website design, and without that vital responsiveness, your bounce rate will only grow.

The Little Touches

It's those flourishes that are going to make you stand out, and the right blend of consistency and originality is going to help your website attract consumers and keep them coming back to you for more. Always makes sure that you:

●      Use favicons

●      Eradicate 404 pages

●      Never use automatic carousels on your homepage

●      Choose a font that is easy to read, and consider tracking, leading, and kerning

It's often the smallest design choices that will have the biggest impact, and that's why it can be so challenging to ensure that your website design is improving your brand status and not harming it.

Getting Technical

Design is about more than making things look their best. It's also a critical component of performance. A beautiful website that takes too long to load might as well be a blank page. Make sure that throughout the design stage, you:

●      Monitor website speed (one of the main reasons for high bounce rates is a slow loading page)

●      Evaluate the speed of your server

●      Ensure colour changes on already clicked links

●      Make navigation easy

Address these technical issues first, and your website will immediately look and feel more professional. It will also help to keep people on your pages.

Using Quality Content

Your website is going to need to be filled with words and images. You should already be aware of the need to provide value with every piece of content that you use, but there are other factors to consider as well:

●      Format for easy reader scanning (using h1 and h2 headers to break up text, short paragraphs, etc.)

●      Avoid overusing images, and remember to make use of whitespace (look at Google's homepage for inspiration)

●      Make sure that your on-site SEO is being used to guide and promote your content

●      Use spell checks, grammar checkers, and get an extra person to read through your content before you post it online (those small errors simply make you look unprofessional)

Content is an area that you will need to focus on for a while. Make sure that you know what it should be doing for you and how to ensure that it is helping you to make sales, build brand loyalty, and attract repeat customers.

Website design covers many key areas, and it can be very easy to overlook some of the most basic ingredients of a well-designed and well-built website. If you want your branding to be more professional and your customers to visit your website again and again, it's time to start thinking more about how much your design choices are holding you back.