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Websites are now indispensable for businesses to succeed. And having a great looking website is crucial if you want to keep up with your competitors.
However, there are plenty of hurdles you will have to overcome if you want to have a great looking website. One of the biggest hurdles is bad website design.
According to experts, bad website design can cost your business. Poorly designed websites can cost you profits, customers and even the credibility of your business.
What are some effects of bad website design on your company? What are the most common mistakes, and how can you rectify them?
Effects of Bad Website Design
A poorly designed website is not just an eyesore, it's also a drain on your finances. Here are just three ways bad website design can cost your business.
- Poorly designed websites can make people doubt whether your business can do its job. Websites are basically your digital storefront, and just like an actual storefront, you would not want to walk into one that looks shoddy. You would rather buy an insurance plan from a company with a streamlined website than one that looks unprofessional.
- Experts say that up to 38 percent of online users will leave or stop engaging with your site if the site is unattractive. It does not matter if your waffle house franchise makes the tastiest food in the area if your website turns off people who may have ordered from your store.
- The combination of lack of customers and loss of credibility can be damaging to your business's profits. You can face loss of income that may seriously affect your ability to stay open. Websites are investments, and they can make or break your business.
Common Mistakes in Website Design
When designing your website, you must ensure it's stylish, functional, and attractive. The best way to do so is by avoiding common mistakes.
Here are four of the most prevalent problems when it comes to designing websites and how you can circumvent them.
Too Cluttered
Many website-designers cram as many features, words, and pictures as they can into one web page. This can create a very unattractive page, with too many things drawing the user's attention.
Too much clutter can make navigating the site too difficult and confuse your users as well.
Instead of just cramming everything into as few pages as possible, understand the need for white space, or gaps between different features. Look for inspiration in minimalist designs and keep your pages streamlined.
You can also spread put features over multiple pages, instead of just hamming them into one page and cluttering it up.
Not Mobile Friendly
More people are now browsing the internet and looking for businesses on their mobile devices than on laptops or desktop computers.
This means that your website must be optimized for mobile or else you will alienate countless potential customers.
Make sure your website's proportions shift when it appears on a smaller screen. The various features on it such as the buttons and similar add-ons also must scale appropriately.
Make sure the font on your website can also shift to the default font types of major phone brands to avoid technical issues.
Text Unreadable
No matter what device your website is viewed on, you want the text on every page to be very readable, and that means the text should be appropriately large.
You can also inadvertently choose overtly complicated or detailed font because they seem to look more stylish.
Font that is too small or too complicated to read properly is worse than useless, it can make customers leave your site entirely.
When choosing fonts for your website, be sure to choose simple and clean fonts. Make sure to scale them properly as well, usually over 18 or 20 points.
Also choose fonts that are sans serif, or without the little flairs and tips at the ends of the letters. These fonts are easier to read and faster to load.
Too Long to Load
Finally, your website may have simple layouts and easy to read font, but sometimes features and functions eat up too much memory. A single photograph can be too large and take too long to load.
Or you may have video plug ins that are too high quality. All these features can bog down your load time, costing users’ precious seconds. If your website is even a second slower to load than your competitor, you can lose customers.
Make sure to compress all information on your website pages and pad down the sizes of videos and pictures. If you have any add-ons, instead of putting them directly on your page, you can just link to them instead and generate a preview.
This will make your page load faster without sacrificing quality.
Website design is crucial to the success of any business nowadays. Learn from these tips, and you can effectively avoid pitfalls that could potentially harm your profits and survivability.
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