Well the advent of so many CMS software available out there, clients are trying to manage their own sites as well as creating websites themselves. This leads to many goof ups and errors. A person who doesn’t knows how to design stuff is simply not a designer and shouldn’t be trying his or her hand on a website. And since we are talking about goof ups, they are not only limited to clients but also made by professional web designers as well.
There are so many of them which I can tell you about but for now let me tell you about some of the significant ones of them:
Too much of font style and of colors.
Design goof ups are pretty common, especially when there are so many amateurish web designers out there. Web pages of a website should have some or the other consistent look which complements them on every page. The theme should remain the same. However, it is not so and errors like, designers using a variety of different font styles and colors makes up for a confusing outlook are there. It also includes improper layouting and design style as well.
Bad Navigation.
Most of the websites that designers do, they forget to put up a navigation bar on it such that surfers can easily go from one page to another. Without it, they will simply surf to the next website as anybody will feel annoyed if they have to go back clicking on the back button again and again to go to some other page on the website.
One should add a site map to provide visitors easy access to every page of your website.
Outdated Content.
Nothing turns off a prospective person to your site to come again than outdated content. You will be surprised as to how many sites contain outdated content. Also, the content needs to be true to its value, taking into consideration the current environment and scenario.
Bad links.
Links which lead to 404 errors and hyperlinks which don’t react when clicked are headaches for any surfer. A good web designer should check all the links if they work as they should be. You can also include a ‘contact’ link to let surfers contact you directly if they find any errors or broken links.
Failing to put link back to home page.
Web designers most often forget to put a link for getting back to home page for the visitor on every page. Why you ask? Because if you send a link to this page to your friend and the link they get is dead, they won’t be able to open it and hence a prospective visitor to your website will wander away. Best way is providing home page link at every page you have.
Not linking with Social Media.
This is the age of the social media and no business can survive without having a presence on it. Forgetting to link your business with social media will be a big mistake. You will greatly benefit by directing customers to your website through social media and thus increasing traffic.
Meaningless Graphics:
The point of having great looking graphics on your website is to increase the user experience and not to bog down the user experience. Speed at which the website can load is more important than the look and feel and we as web designers better maintain a balance between these two and these graphics should be optimized.
Over usage of Flash: No doubt use of flash makes your site dynamic looking, but one has to keep in mind that not everyone has the bandwidth and software installed for it.