Mr T’s Top 6 Web design no no’s!

1) Image overload

It’s not always about looks guys

We get it you want your visitors to be wowed when they visit your website, but there is a limit showing off with all those pretty images. It altogether distracts your visitor and does nothing for user journey and more than anything slows down your site. Less is more my friends. Think white space.

2) No clear calls to action

Oh no we’ve lost them

Ok so let’s take this website as an example. First impressions are not necessarily all that bad because it quite nicely ticks the sleek and minimalistic design boxes but then it goes downhill pretty quickly from there onwards. After all what exactly is the user meant to do – there is no clear direction let alone an ‘About Us’ tab to give us more information. The consequences are pretty clear, no call to action, no visitors. Simple.

3) Loading times

4 seconds your time’s up

Again if you’ve jam pack your website with images and videos you’re asking for trouble with the web time keeper. This will immediately affect your visitor staying and altogether wanting to return to your site. Microsoft’s Bing team did some research on this and found that even a less than a 2 second increased delay in a page responsive meant unhappy customers with a 3.8% loss in satisfaction and a loss in revenue by 4.3%. So if your website is slow, well you’re losing money especially if you’re an E-Commerce online shop.

4) Content

Underrated but gold

Yes okay, so web designers are not content writers, but that doesn’t mean that considering content is not an important aspect of excellent web design. Be sure to pay attention to your font selection including size, colour and spacing. Alignment and uniformity is number 1 along with the rest, if your visitor feels let down, we can pretty much guarantee they won’t be coming back in a hurry.

5) Flashing gifs

It’s hurting my eyes!

Our designers hate flashing gifs but when they become the background of your website, well it is just plain dangerous, we’d have to hold one of two of our team back literally! For them it seems as though integrating a flashing gif background is the same as committing a cardinal sin of web design (ironic given our example). What’s more, it’s distracting and does not help your traffic flow. You don’t want to scare your visitors do you?

6) Not responsive?

You’ve got to be joking!

Now we’ve saved the worst no no for last – designing your website with absolutely no responsive consideration, eek. With a hefty 67% of consumers saying that they are more likely to buy from a mobile friendly site than one that’s not is enough of a hint isn’t it. We’d even go as saying don’t design a website if it’s not going to be responsive on mobile and tablet devices. Ouch.

So there you have it, if any of these web design no no’s resonates with you, do what Mr T says give us a call and we’ll be sure to get you on your way!