Leading Web Designing Mistakes to Avoid To Keep the Usability Intact

For a new web designer, the creation of a perfect website can prove to be pretty challenging. There are so many things to take into account – meeting the demand of your client, the visual appeal that you want to produce and other creative tit-bits that you want to be a part of your website. But the supreme challenge is to keep the usability of the site user-friendly.

 

It is very common for the designer to lapse into the creative mood and become totally oblivious to the need of the users. As a web designer, it is necessary to make the usability of the website your top priority. Given below is a list of common mistakes that web designers commit due to which the usability of the site gets compromised:

 

1. Absence of search box:

After you have designed a website and incorporated quality content into it, you have a reason to rejoice thinking that you can provide the users with everything that they could ever want. But what if the users look for a specific piece of information? One of the easiest ways to help your visitors is by including a search box. Take help of the Google Custom Search to engineer your own search box so that visitors can easily acquire the information they are looking for.

2. Unreadable content:

You can put hard labor to make your website visually appealing but remember that visitors come to your sight not to look at your artifacts but to gain information. So consider the following few things:

 

• Choose the color scheme wisely. Take a look around to know how others use color on their site. Choose such color which will enhance the readability of your site.

 

• For all the content use sans serif typefaces.

 

• Do not play with a wide variety of font sizes. Keep it limited to three sizes- one for the main header, one for sub-header and one for the body.

 

• Same rule applies to the choice of typefaces. Try to keep the choice of typefaces limited to three for a single page.

 

• Try to use bold, italics and underlines sparingly.

 

• Make your alignment decision wisely. Left-aligned texts are more readable than the right-aligned texts. Full-justification is suitable for the long lines but they look choppy in texts organized in narrow column.

 

• Keep the paragraphs brief.

 

3. Unorganized content:

Although you do not generate content but you will be held responsible for the organization of the content of the site. So you will do better to adhere to the following advices:

 

• Organize the content according to the priority. Take into consideration the most press issues of your clients and place them on the opening page of the website. Then place the less important issues.

 

• Try to make assumption about the way your visitor’s mind work and organize your content accordingly. It will make your visitor’s experience a pleasant one for the time he will stay on your site. You can also consider asking for feedback about the organization of your content from your visitors.

 

• Make it a point to remember that there will be different kinds of people who will come to visit your site. They will posses different levels of knowledge, expertise and requirements. Keep such differences in mind while organizing the content.

 

4. Old and outdated content:

Websites should be made dynamic and necessary changes must be done to it on a regular basis to keep it up to date. Instead of filling your website with new contents, it will be better to update the existing contents. That way you can save both valuable time and money.

 

5. Poor navigation:

Keep the navigation of your site easy, clear and user-friendly. If visitors get frustrated while navigating through your site, you can sure that he will not stay for long. Keep the following points in mind to create a user-friendly navigation:

 

• Utilize easy-to-understand names for labeling links

 

• Make the hyperlinks stand out from the rest of the text.

 

• Remove the dead links as soon as possible

 

• Make the hyperlinks clickable and do not use smaller font for them.

 

6. Do not flex your creative muscle:

Do not get over-ambitious about the website you create even though you are a genius web designer. Be deterred to give full play to your imagination and showcase all your creative talent within a single site. It might lead to the confusion of your visitors, so the bottomline is keep it simple.

 

7. Do away with horizontal scroll bar:

Do not utilize the option of horizontal scroll bar in your website unless you want to earn the ire of your visitors. Seek help from Google Analytics to know about the monitor resolution that your visitors are using to access your site. As now there are different types of devices through which a site can be accessed, so it is better to know how the visitors are viewing your site.

 

8. Acknowledge the importance of white space:

White space generally contains the information that is visible even without scrolling, so its importance is easily understandable. Due to this reason, most of the web designers tend to cram this space with as much information as possible. But that is also not commendable as it would make your visitors perplexed and they will fail to appreciate your effort. Rather try to keep the appearance of the white space simple, attractive and professional.

 

9. Use of music:

While it comes to incorporating music to your website, evaluate the choice of your target audience and decide if it is really necessary to use music in your website. But you can be sure that it will do nothing to increase the popularity of your site. Still if you do include audio, make sure to stick to a single tune.

 

10. Unwise use of pagination:

Use pagination is mandatory for the e-commerce websites, as you cannot showcase all your products in a single page. But using it for articles means you are being greedy, because in that case you will use it to increase your revenues from the advertisements contained on the pages. But it will harm your site by annoying the visitors and diluting the content.

As a web designer, you will do good to keep the list of blunders in mind just mentioned above, because that will enable you to create a smooth, easy and user-friendly website.