How to Avoid the 12 Common Web Design Mistakes

How to Avoid the 12 Common Web Design Mistakes



Copyright 2002 Herman Drost



Are people visiting your web site but not buying? This may be a

sign and the time to do some redesign of your web site. Often

you are so close to what you have created, that you can't see

obvious design mistakes. I often do the same when writing an

article – everything looks fine when I have finished, yet when I

review it the next day and I'm amazed at how many mistakes I

have made.



Let's look at some of the most common Web Design mistakes:



1. Sloppy Web Site Copy – your heading and first paragraph should

clearly indicate the purpose of your web site. "Content is King"

on the Net, so make sure there is plenty of focused information

for your visitors. The content should draw the visitor through

the site to take action in the end. Include contact information

on every page in case people have questions.



2. Bad Color Coordination – avoid using dark text on a dark

background. Use dark text on a light background, such as black

on white. Use colors that blend well together – observe nature

or look at paintings to get some idea of good color

combinations.



3. Pages Load Too Slowly – using too many images or inserting

large images on a web page, slow down the loading time of your

web page. Optimize your images (reduce their size) before you

insert them on your site, otherwise your visitors will leave

before your site is loaded.



4. Poor Navigation – this means visitors can't easily find the

information. They experience broken links, error pages or

discover too many moving objects (animations, flash, scrolling

text, marquees) – all these will annoy the visitor and cause him

to click elsewhere. Keep your navigation simple by creating

clear links on all web pages.



5. Orphan Pages – these are pages other than your homepage, where

the visitor has no idea how it fits in with the overall

structure of your web site. You should always have a link to the

homepage, so visitors know where they are on your web site.



6. Long Scrolling – the visitor has to scroll horizontally, or

many pages vertically to view the whole web page. Create the

width of your web page to fit on one screen, to avoid horizontal

scrolling and have a maximum of 3 pages to be scrolled

vertically.



7. Meta Tags Missing – without optimizing your web page with a

description or keywords, people can't find you on the search

engines. Research key words or phrases relevant to your site

content. Include them in your title, description and Web Site

copy.



8. Lack of Marketing Strategy – a beautiful lawn without sun or

water will soon die. A Web Site without visitors will soon die

also. They are the life blood for your website. Create numerous

marketing strategies to attract visitors to your web site – you

never know which one will be the most effective.



9. Poor Layout and Design – create an aesthetically pleasing

design to keep the visitors on your site. Create enough white

space between your text and images by using margins. Don't

overlap text and images and avoid capitalizing all text – it

gives the impression you are shouting at your visitors. Use

font type such as Arial or Verdana to make it easier to read on

your computer screen.



10. Avoid Using Frames – frames don't allow you to bookmark the

page or return to it and sometimes the URLS stop working.



11. No Cross Browser Compatibility – you may be losing many

customers if your Web Site is not compatible to the browsers

most people are using. Internet Explorer (IE 4, 5, 6) is

currently the dominant browser, and most users are displaying

800x600 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K

colors.

(http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) .

Therefore check your design with these statistics in mind.



12. Outdated Information – your web site is like a garden. If you

allow weeds to block out the sun and take over your garden, it

will be destroyed. Attracting and keeping web site visitors,

means continually adding new information (i.e. latest news),

deleting irrelevant, outdated information and removing broken

links.



Continuous maintenance of your web site is crucial to

attracting and retaining visitors. If you don't have time to do

it yourself, hire a Web Gardener (Web Designer), to keep your

site looking fresh, clean and fast loading.