Four Web Design Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Whether you are a small or big business, your website is a pretty important part of your brand, especially in this day and age. It is usually the first place an individual will look when searching your company and if the web design is terrible then that means a high bounce rate.

Below are a few bad web design mistakes and some simple solutions:

1.      ADD ALL THE THINGS!

A lot of businesses will try and add as much as they can to a page, whether it’s a lot of text or just adding bits that can be on another page to one page. This can make the page look cluttered, confusing and, crap.

A cluttered page can look unprofessional and to a user it can look overwhelming, meaning they click away from the site.

Solution? Less is more!

• Simplify your text – not many people will stay to read an endless scroll page of text. So simplify it. Make your text to-the-point, or use bullet points.

If you need to add a lot of text, make sure to break it up with headings and keep the paragraphs short.

• Whitespace is a good thing! – You may not realise this but the goal of whitespace is to attract attention to something that is important, such as registration or buy it now buttons.
• Is it relevant? Do you need it? Keep asking these questions on everything you add. You will probably find that most of the items added go and you are then left with a clean page with only relevant info.

2.      Unorganised navigation

Poor navigation system is one of the reasons for high bounce rates. If a user cannot find the information within 3-5 seconds, they will leave. They don’t want to feel like they are Alice trapped in a maze.

Solution? A well-organised and logical navigation system. Make sure each page can be easily found by the user, and group by similar categories, for example, clothing websites will separate men and women’s clothing, then within that have further sub-categories.

Breadcrumb navigation is also a great way to provide users of where they are on the site, and how to proceed to the next page. Information on this can be found HERE.

3.      Links to the nether

a.k.a, a broken link. Basically a link that takes the user to a 404 error page or to nothing.

Solution? Simple really – double check every link, make sure they go to where they are supposed to go. Google Webmaster Tools is a good tool as it can detect these pages for you.

4.      Pop-ups

Pop-ups are annoying, so annoying there is a specially designed tool to block them. However, when used correctly they can be great; they can help conversions and increase sales.

Solution? Below are some tips:

• Relevant – make sure the pop up relates to your visitor and the page they are viewing
• Offer – try and include an attractive offer to entice the customer
• Frequency – having a pop-up that appears on every page will be an annoyance to the visitor, strategize where you want the pop-ups to be
• Language – make sure your language isn’t aggressive. No one likes to be talked at, so make it more personal and/or informal.

TL; DR? Keep your website simple! A high bounce rate is never good so make sure you are doing everything to make a visitor stay. Always get a few people to double check the website and to have a go for usability.

For some extra help on web design, check out a few of our previous blogs:

• Web Design: Where to start?
• Web design and viewer behaviour
• 5 Top Tips for Better Web Design