Web design is the art of presenting your web content to the audience. For a web design to function effectively, it needs to take into considerations how visitors see the site. Unfortunately, even the best web designers in the world make mistakes. In this article, we are going to review several bad web design mistakes you should always avoid.
By making sure that you stay away from making these mistakes, but also do not have any foolish idea pointing towards one of them, not only will the web design over on your website be more intuitive, but it will also encourage more and more users to stay and to browse the site for more information. The guide works regardless of whether you are a person that would like to hire a designer and wants to keep a look on the mistakes that they should avoid, or an actual designer thinking of ways to improve their work.
Cross-Browser Incompatibility
There are at least four popular browsers on the market today, and many more for mobile users. Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer are the most commonly used browsers on the market, followed by Opera and quite a long list of mobile browsers. Your site must appear correctly – and function properly – when opened using any of these browsers. This is called cross-browser compatibility.
Sadly, many designers use lines of codes and CSS that will only work with one browser. Even worse, the site looks unreadable when opened with the other browsers. You can simply avoid this by doing a thorough cross-browser compatibility test before actually launching the site.
No Mobile-Friendly Version
There are two schools in developing a mobile-friendly website. You can go with the responsive design cues and make your website appear correctly regardless of the screen resolution, or you can develop a mobile-only version of the site. Both ways have their own advantages and disadvantages. The key here is to have a mobile-friendly site no matter which methods you use.
Over 70% of the world’s Internet traffic now come from smartphones and mobile devices. People use their phones and tables more than they use their laptops. Having a mobile-friendly site will help your website succeed in an already competitive market.
Unclean Codes & Unused Resources
I’m afraid I have to make a confession: I still do this sometimes. I tried several versions of the design and end up with a long CSS file filled with unused styles. Luckily, there are a lot of tools that can help take care of this problem automatically.
The same tool can also minimize your JavaScript, HTML and even server-side scripts that you use throughout the site. Your site can be as much as 80% lighter once the unused codes and blank spaces are removed entirely.
Perform the clean-up before you start checking for browser compatibility issues so that you can anticipate potential bugs and possible errors before hand. You will have a website that runs smoothly and loads quickly by completing these simple steps.
Based on everything that has been outline above, web design isn’t really such a mysterious subject anymore, as the arise of thousands of websites on a daily basis makes it impossible for it to be. However, only those websites with great content, but also pleasant design are meant to have success in today’s Internet world.
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