Developing a usable and attractive web design is really a challenging job. This article highlights some deadly mistakes that designers make and suggestions to overcome these mistakes.
1. Use of massive Images
A new trend in web design is to use larger images throughout the web pages. Using larger images increase the possibility for its non-responsive nature. The images used in the web pages should have a fixed width and height to ensure its quick loading. The use of high-resolution images throughout a website takes more time to load web pages. It is better to keep the image size less than 640x480. If the user wants to download the image, it will be more difficult to download a high-resolution image. Therefore, be aware about the use of images while designing a web page.
2. Poor Readability
Readability is one of the most important aspects of web design. The success or failure of your website depends on how effectively your content is structured. Try to avoid the use of small font size and long sentences, use bullet points, headers and sub headers. The use of contrast colours adversely affects the content readability of web users. The most accepted colour contrast for content is black letters in white background. The poor colour contrast will make the reading more difficult and painful.
3. Using Flash
All websites are competing to maximize their visibility in search engines. The information hidden in the Flash is difficult to find and process to search engines. Apart from these, Flash web sites break the universal nature of a website. Because the Flash websites cannot be navigate through any browser on any computer or on any devices. Flash sites are usually takes more loading time. The web user cannot increase the font size to make the content more readable. Because of all these reasons, it will be better to avoid the use of Flash.
4. Poor Link Treatment
A link is required to navigate easily from one page to another page. The web users are very busy with their own business. Therefore, they need quick access to the links to get required information immediately. To provide the textual description for all links help to make navigation smooth. Each web page should have a navigation bar to guide the customers to get easy access to any areas of the website. Try to add an easy to find site map in the main navigation bar or footer to provide browsers at a glance view of every page in the website.
5. Outdated Information
The browsers expect latest information about your services, products and the company. If you are not updated, the users may assume that you are not innovative or you are not in the field any longer. The outdated content in the web site not only create a bad experience for the browsers, it highly affect your business also. You should be able to keep your website up to date otherwise the web users will search for your competitors.