Website Design Crimes to Avoid at All Costs

Even with the best intentions, there are plenty of mistakes that the most savvy inbound marketer can make, which can cripple conversion rates, annoy visitors, and make your brand look unprofessional.

In design, we rely a lot on best practices and tutorials. The truths they espouse are more often than not accurate – we've all seen the arguments play out before, and copied those styles we liked the most. However, there is an unfortunate trend among many designers of turning a blind eye to common problems in our industry – problems that lead to poor decisions across the board. The following list shines a light on five of the most common website design crimes:

Carousels

The most common mistake with carousels is using them for the wrong type of content. For example, if you have 20 products but only one looks interesting, don't use a carousel — show all 20 products on a single page instead.

Another mistake is using too many slides in your carousel so that it becomes hard for visitors to find anything specific within it. If you have more than three slides in your carousel, consider removing a few images or replacing them with links that lead directly to relevant product pages or landing pages where visitors can learn more about specific products before making a purchase decision (or signing up for an account).

Poorly-executed animations

Animations are a great way to capture attention and keep users engaged with your content. But poorly executed animations can ruin an otherwise perfect design. There are tons of free animation tools out there that allow you to create smooth and professional animations on your own — but if you’re not careful, they can make your site feel dated or cheap.

Popups

The pop-ups will either send traffic to an external site or try to sell you something. Most people don’t like pop-ups because they are distracting and make them leave your website without even looking at it.

You can use popups if they provide value to your visitors and if they are not too aggressive. It’s recommended to have only one popup per page, as more than one can be too much for most visitors.

Parallax Scrolling

This is one of the most popular trends right now, but it's also one of the worst ones for your website. Parallax scrolling sounds like an interesting feature and can add some visual interest to your site, but in most cases, it only serves as a distraction from what visitors came to see in the first place. Not only that, but it can be difficult for users with disabilities who rely on screen readers or other assistive technology devices to access your site.

No Clear CTA

A clear call to action is one of the most important parts of any website, and it's something that many designers seem to forget about. The call to action tells visitors what they should do next after they've viewed your page or product. It's the last step in your sales funnel, so it needs to be simple, clear and obvious.

No Value Proposition

This is probably one of the most common mistakes made by new businesses. They spend thousands of dollars on their website, but there's no clear value proposition on what they do or why people should care about them. Don't waste your money on a fancy site if you don't know what you're trying to sell — take some time to figure out your value proposition first!

Not optimising for mobile

More than half of visitors to most websites come from mobile devices. If you don't have a mobile-friendly site, you're missing out on a lot of potential customers who don't want to deal with a frustrating experience.

Slow landing times

Slow loading times frustrate visitors and make them leave your site immediately. A good rule of thumb is that if your page takes longer than three seconds to load, then there’s something wrong with its code or design. And if visitors have to wait for more than five seconds? They’ll leave!

No contact information

If you want to get in touch with your customers, they need to know how. You should include at least one contact method on every page of your site. If you're not sure what works best for your industry, try calling some competitors and ask them what they use.

Lack of information

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of designing your website, but it's important to remember that your site is a tool for communication. It needs to be clear and easy to navigate so that people can find what they're looking for.

The best way to ensure this is by including plenty of content on each page — especially when it comes to contact information, like a phone number or email address. This way, if someone has questions about your business or products, they can easily find the answers they're looking for.

Broken links

Broken links are not only frustrating for site visitors — they can also hurt search engine rankings. When search engines crawl your site, they look for links to all the pages on your site. If any of those links are broken, then the crawler will not be able to find those pages, which may result in your ranking dropping significantly. Check all of your pages for broken links every time you make any changes to your website. This includes adding new content or modifying existing content. You should also check external websites that link back to yours — these can break without warning if their URLs change or disappear altogether!

Using too many fonts

Keeping things simple is key when it comes to typography on websites. Don't use more than two fonts in any given design — one for headings and one for body text — unless there's a really good reason (i.e., a special theme). And never use more than three different sizes of a single font family; similar faces will make your site seem cohesive, while contrasting faces will look confusing and amateurish.

Bad navigation

One of the most common mistakes made by website designers is creating navigation that doesn’t work. Visitors expect to be able to move through pages quickly and easily, so it’s important that your site works well on desktop computers as well as mobile phones.

Incorrect usage of SEO

You should always use relevant keywords on your website. However, if you try to cram them into every possible space on your site, you’ll end up with something that doesn’t make sense and will come across as spammy. If a reader sees a lot of keywords in an article, they may not bother to read it because they won’t trust the content. Avoid using more than 2-3 keywords per paragraph and keep them relevant to the topic at hand.

Improperly used headings

Don't use headings in the body copy. Headings are meant to be used to break up your content and make it easier for readers to scan. They should not be used as a substitute for paragraphs. If you have several paragraphs that all have the same idea, then try breaking them up with subheadings.

Oversized images and videos

Oversized images and video can distract users from your content. They also use up valuable screen real estate. If you must have a large image or video on the home page, consider making it a clickable link that takes visitors to another page.

Too much content or information

Your visitors aren't interested in every detail of your business, especially if it's one they don't care about! Focus on developing content for the pages where people will spend most of their time, such as the home page, product pages and contact forms. For everything else, use only those words that are absolutely necessary to convey your message clearly. This will help keep visitors on track and keep them from getting overwhelmed by too much information at once!

Irrelevant content

Too much information on one page can be overwhelming for visitors. If you have too many images and videos on a page, the page can become difficult for search engines to crawl, which means it won't rank as well in search results. It's also important not to have too much text on any one page because that can cause people to bounce from your site if they're having trouble reading it all in one sitting (or even one scroll). A good rule of thumb is that if you have more than two images or videos per page, you're probably overdoing it.

Unorganized layout

It's hard to find anything on a poorly designed website. Navigation menus are often too small or too far away from the content they link to, making it difficult to find what you're looking for. Poorly organized layouts can also lead visitors astray because they don't know where to look next, or they might end up on a page that doesn't match their search query. The solution is a simple one — make sure your site flows logically, with no dead ends and no extra steps required to get from one page to another.

Too Many Form Fields

When designing your website, keep in mind that your visitors are busy people who have places they need to be. If you make them fill out a long form or click through multiple pages to see what they're interested in, they'll leave your site and go somewhere else where they can get what they want faster.

Your goal should be creating a short, simple path for the visitor from their initial search query to an actionable result — whether that's making a purchase or signing up for an email newsletter.

No Trust Indicators

Most people do not trust their first experience with a website. They want to know that they’re dealing with a reputable business. This is especially true when they’re making a transaction or filling out an application. So it’s important to have trust indicators prominently displayed on your site.

Too Many Colors and Fonts

Using too many colors and fonts can make your site look busy and cluttered, which is not an attractive quality for any business website. One way to avoid this mistake is by sticking with two or three different colors throughout the entire site. The same goes for fonts: Choose one main font family (Times New Roman) and then use it consistently throughout your website design.

Tiny Text

The problem is that, if you don't have a big enough font size on your website, it can be hard for people to read. This makes sense – after all, why would you want to make it harder for people to read what you've written?

The solution is simple: make sure that your font size is large enough so that your text can be easily read by everyone. You can test this by shrinking down your browser window and seeing whether or not the text becomes too small to read. If it does, then you need to increase the font size until it's readable at all sizes.

Too Many Ads

You don't need to cover every inch of your site with ads or pop-ups. While ad revenue can be helpful, it's important not to go overboard with them because they can distract from your content and make it difficult for users to find what they're looking for.

Typos and bad grammar

Typos happen to everyone — even the most experienced designers. But if you're running an eCommerce site or providing any kind of service online, it's critical to ensure that your copy is perfect. There are many tools available that can help with this process; some will even check your copy as you type or write it down on paper before publishing it on your site. You should also have someone else proofread everything before publishing so they can catch any mistakes that may have been missed during the editing process.

Using stock photos

Stock photos are fine in moderation, but using them for every page or every section on your site is going to make it look cheap and generic. If you're using stock photos, at least try to pick ones that fit with your brand's identity or current marketing campaign so they don't stand out as much as they would if you used random images from Google Images Search.

Bulky navigation menus and pages

It's important to make navigation as simple as possible so that visitors can find what they're looking for quickly and easily. Make sure your navigation menu isn't too long or complicated — break it up into manageable chunks so that users can find what they're looking for without getting lost along the way.

Lack of visual appeal

If your website is boring, visitors won't want to stick around for long. They'll leave and never come back. Make sure that your site is visually appealing by using eye-catching images, bold colors and interesting fonts that draw attention to the important parts of your content (such as headers).

No navigation menu

This one seems obvious — after all, who wants to visit a website without navigation? Not only will visitors find it hard to navigate around your site without one, but search engines won't be able to find you either (because there's no way for them to know what pages are available). Make sure that every page has a link back to home base so visitors can get where they need quickly.

Not using social media buttons properly

These days, many people use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter when they're browsing online; this means that if you don't have social media buttons on your site, then they won't be able to share any information that they find interesting with their friends by pressing one button instead of copying and pasting text into an email message or instant message program like WhatsApp or Messenger.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the best way to avoid website design crimes is to pay close attention to what your users need. And that applies equally to the sites you create with other people in mind (like your client or employer). It's important to think about these basic design principles, because they will ultimately go a long way towards helping you succeed.