When designing a website, there are four potentially catastrophic problems that can easily be avoided. These errors easily turn off users towards your online boutique and drive them into the arms your competitors. The thing is, these mistakes are also extremely easy to avoid, as long as you know what you’re looking for.
Avoid These Four Web Design Mistakes:
1) Lacking A Clear Purpose
When designing your website, you need to make sure that every page has a purpose and easily express that purpose. Every page should convey a call to action or provide something for your customer. If it doesn’t, redesign that page or cut it completely. There are no blank rooms in a physical store, so why should your online store be any different?
No page should be useless. Ask yourself this question for every page: “Is this necessary?”. Sometimes, it might be worth it to combine pages and put them together, and others you will have to cut them entirely.
2) Having Little Readability
While your website might use the same font on every page, if it’s hard to read, it can turn away a potential customer.
Things to Consider When Optimizing a Website’s Readability
Contrast
If the colors harshly contrast of one another, they can actually be hard to read on a bright screen.
Font Type
You want to stick to simple Serif or Sans Serif fonts. Too many accents or letters that look like they were hand drawn cursive make it hard to read.
Colors
When it comes to colors, it’s best to stick to black text, or at least assure that your font is a darker color than the background.
Customers can’t buy from a website that’s hard to read. It’s impossible. Load up your website and ask yourself one simple question: Is the text hard to read? If the answer is yes, then it’s time to switch something up.
Your website should not be difficult to read, and it definitely shouldn’t strain the eyes. If it is hard to read, it’s for the best to just go back and change your fonts and colors to something simpler that can be read easier.
4) Not Having a Responsive Website
A website that cannot be viewed on different sized screens is a major web design mistake to look out for. Websites are being accessed on more and more devices, so you need to be sure that your website can be viewed on those devices. You want to make sure it is a seamless experience whether they’re on a tablet, their laptop, or their phone. If the text is blown up or elements of the site are covering text, that interferes with readability and can completely destroy your credibility.
5) Lacking Consistency
You don’t want visitors to your ecommerce business to be confused. Confusion pushes users away and the most common source of confusion is a lack of consistency. Each page should have the same rules and same basic look as every other page on your website: Colors should be the same, fonts should be the same, navigation should be easy. A simple website, that’s black letters on white backgrounds, with no fancy bells or whistles, but is the same throughout the entire website, will outperform an inconsistent website that changes its rules from page to page.
Your navigation bar should always be in the same place. Your colors should be the same. Your fonts should be the same. If you print out every page on your website, and one of the pages doesn’t look like it belongs with the rest of your website, then that page needs to be looked at again and redesigned. Think of your online store as a real store. Imagine walking from one section and then the next section is entirely different in tone and feeling. You’d be confused! That’s what you’re doing when you decide to change the “furniture” in your website.
All of these mistakes can be summed up in one statement: Work for your customer. Make sure their experience is as easy as possible. If they’re struggling in anyway, then you have an issue. Keeping these issues in mind will help you to convert more of your website visitors into customers.
