Top 10 Design Mistakes

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parthasarker
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Full Name: Partha Sarker
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It is so true that it isn’t in the tool but in the hands which use those tools. A bad workman WILL blame his tools. So do not really think about the tools too much before really conquering the design and design standards naivety in you. No doubt, understanding the workflow of a design tool like Dreamweaver can work wonders and is required for authoring your website; criticisms mushroom if you do not pay heed to some points and avoid design mistakes.

Top Design Mistakes
Not only amateurs but experienced designers too can sometime make a few mistakes that can tarnish the usability and usefulness of a website. Let’s take a look at them.

1. PDF Files for Online Reading – Think from users’ perspective. Would you like to have your flow of surfing the website being broken? Not at all! Moreover, the standard browser commands don’t function the same way for PDF files as they do for an HTML page which makes the surfing more frustrating. Because the PDF file is not a web page, it does not show the navigation bars. This makes impossible for the user to directly hover to any other pages on the website. In short, PDF files are optimized for printing and are quite repulsive as far as reading and navigation are concerned.

2. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links – The implications of not implementing the minute details can be adverse. In case of sites with number of pages, users tend to identify their navigational pattern by recognizing the color of links. A rule of thumb is color of the visited link should change so as to enable the user to know about the pages that he has visited. Knowing the past and present locations will make it easier for the user in deciding where to go next. Color of the links is a key factor in this navigation process. Users can ignore the links that proved useless on their earlier visit. On the other hand, they may click the link once again if they found it helpful in the past. When visited links don’t change color, users exhibit more navigational disorientation in usability testing the revisiting the same pages repeatedly.

3. Non-scannable Content - ‘F’ stands for Fast when it comes to the Internet. Eye tracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern. In a matter of seconds, their eyes move at amazing speed across the website in a very different way than what you learned in the school. When you are writing for a website, write for web and not for the print. A wall of text is a big turn-off which is boring and painful to read. Write your content in an intuitive manner and incorporate the following:

• Headings
• Sub-headings
• Highlighted keywords
• Bulleted lists
• Short paragraphs
• Simple writing style and don’t be verbose.
• Avoid too much of a marketing jargon.

4. Consistent Font Style – Make sure that all the pages have same font style except for those specified separately. Having different font styles on the same page or website greatly tarnishes your professional image and questions your basic knowledge about web design aspects. Moreover, test your web pages across all major web browsers to check the font style and its orientation.

5. Leaving Page Titles Untouched – If all your pages have the same “Welcome to our company” title or some other generic title shared across all the pages on your site, it not only turns off the visitors but also fails in conveying what the page is about to the search engines. Title tag is an important search engine ranking factor and on the search engine results page, gets displayed in form of the link to your website. If it isn’t interesting and unique, first it won’t rank and even if it does, not many users will be enticed to click on your link.

6. Non-Targeted Advertisements – Most of the times web users don’t pay attention to any obtrusive advertisements that seem to be diverting them from their goal. This is very true for banner advertisements and the phenomenon has been amply researched upon and is known as banner blindness. Valuable space on your website might be lost whereas you could have chosen a better ad format/lead generation method utilizing that space.

7. Violating Design Conventions – Jakob’s law of Web User Experience states that, “users spend most of their time on other websites”. This means that the user prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. They form expectations for your site based on what’s commonly done on most of the other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave. Safely assume that consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles i.e. when things always behave the same, users don’t have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience.

8. Opening New Browser Windows – The basic of enhancing user experience on the website is to provide him with an intuitive user interface and in achieving this task, links play an important role. It is not only important to strategically place the links but also to decide how the links behave? If the user clicks on a link and an unwarranted pop-up window crops up, it is quite frustrating for the user. Similarly, if on clicking the link, the destination page opens in a new window, the user might get confused by seeing the grayed out Back button which hampers his browsing flow on the website. This means, links that don’t work as expected undermine users’ understanding of their own system. But it does not mean that opening a new window is completely prohibited. The “Open in New Window” option is best when linking to a different domain and whose content further supplements the reading of present website’s content.

9. Not Answering Users’ Questions – Users are highly goal-driven on the Web. They visit sites because there’s something they want to accomplish — maybe even buy your product. The ultimate failure of a website is when it fails in making the users accomplish their goals. Sometimes the answer is simply not there and if you don’t tell them the specifics you lose the sale because users have to assume that your product or service doesn’t meet their needs. Other times the specifics are buried under a thick layer of marketing information and brand slogans. Since users don’t have time to read everything, such hidden information might almost not be there for the user.

10. Improper Linking Pattern – This completely impedes the ability of user to understand the structure of the website and quickly move to the desired section. The linking of the pages should be logical and intuitive and should help the user to understand the flow of information on the website.

Avoiding these mistakes can help your website perform better in search engines as well as is a good experience for your visitor.

Source: http://bhopu.com/2009/08/top-10-design-mistakes/

Thanks :)


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Tariq
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