Web design is its own profession and its own category.
There are tons of professionals out there who specialize in it, specifically, as a service that's distinct from both web development and general graphic design.
It's about more than just aesthetics, too.
It's also a matter of ergonomics, a “don't make me think” kind of a thing.
Things like navigation also play a major role in web design.
There are actually a lot of mistakes that people commonly make in their website design,
Especially solopreneurs who DIY it themselves.
If you're not a designer by profession, a lot of these things might hardly even cross your mind.
But, they're surprisingly important.
Little things like fonts that don't go together, or bad kerning — that's the spacing between letters in typography — can be a major turnoff for potential customers.
In a recent blog post, Neil Patel lists some of the most common website mistakes across a range of categories, mostly pertaining to visual design.
Some of them are pretty obvious, like bad grammar in the content, or slow site speed. But here are eight mistakes that aren't talked about as much.
1. No favicon
Many website visitors prefer to use lots of tabs while they’re browsing.
Some users leave tabs open so they can review them later.
Favicons give visitors the visual cue they need to orient themselves, find what they’re looking for, and return to your tab while they’re browsing.
2. Generic 404 pages
404 pages are silent traffic killers. An informal survey of 3,475 users showed that the vast majority of users don’t even try to take a positive action to resolve the problem.
Most users simply hit the back button, leaving your site for good.
[image source: Neil Patel]
Your home page uses carousels.
Carousels aren’t always terrible on their own.
They become a problem when they scroll automatically. These carousels are conversion killers because they induce banner blindness (they look like ads), reducing visibility.
They distract and annoy your website visitors, moving their attention away from the one thing they should be focused on: conversion!
3. Poor kerning, tracking, and leading
Kerning, refers to the space in between two characters (numbers, letters, or symbols).
[image source: Neil Patel]
Tracking refers to the spacing in between your words and phrases.
[image source: Neil Patel]
Leading applies to the spaces in between the lines of your words.
[image source: Neil Patel]
The closer together these are, the harder it is for your website visitors to read and understand what you’re trying to say.
These details seem pretty insignificant on their own; who cares as long as it’s readable?
The problem with kerning, tracking, leading, and other typography mistakes is that they make clarity difficult or impossible.
Clarity is incredibly important because you can’t persuade visitors until they understand you.
A Facebook Ad that’s written in Portuguese won’t be persuasive unless you also happen to speak Portuguese, right?
Clarity trumps persuasion because clarity is an element of persuasion.
4. Using too many fonts
Using too many font types and font styles creates confusion.
Visitors are distracted by the presentation when they should be focused on the message you’re trying to convey.
[image source: Neil Patel]
Repeatedly changing your fonts decreases cognitive fluency.
It’s a visual speed bump that breaks your visitor’s focus.
Your website may be appealing, but overdoing it with lots of fonts and styles isn’t a good idea.
A good rule of thumb is to focus on two or three fonts.
5. Poor use of whitespace
When it’s used well, whitespace increases comprehension, improves readability, increases attention, and maximizes clarity.
When there isn’t enough whitespace, content is overwhelming for visitors to read.
[image source: Neil Patel]
That’s a pretty extreme example, but it shows that whitespace is important.
Google uses whitespace to focus their user’s attention on what is most important.
[image source: Neil Patel]
What about too much whitespace? That’s a bit more difficult to assess. Here’s what it looks like.
[image source: Neil Patel]
What’s the difference between this example and Google?
Intent.
Google wants visitors to focus their attention on searching for an answer to their question.
Their whitespace has a purpose and it fits with their visitors’ goals.
When there’s an issue with too much whitespace, it typically means one of two things.
- The whitespace doesn’t have a purpose; or
- It has a purpose but it doesn’t fit with your website visitor’s goals.
When there’s too much whitespace or too little, it decreases clarity and focus.
6. Not changing the color of visited links
Visitors use links to figure out where they are and where they’ve been.
This is important because your visitors use the color of visited links to exclude pages that didn’t give them what they were looking for.
This is also helpful because it keeps visitors from visiting the wrong page over and over again.
7. Poor sizing and scaling
Stretched or poorly-sized images look cheap and unprofessional.
It also decreases trust.
Images should be scaled vertically and horizontally with a one-to-one ratio.
What about large images?
Large images decrease load times and, as we’ve seen, slow load times cause visitors to bounce.
If you want to work with images, use common file formats like PNG, JPEG, and GIF (stay away from TIFF).
A good rule of thumb is to size images for the dimensions where your image(s) will appear and save each image using sizes that are optimized for the dimensions that will be used as well as for the social network you’d like to share your images on.
Use a CDN if you’re hoping to increase page speed.
You can read about a bunch of other common web design mistakes in the full post from Neil Patel.
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