5 Website Redesign Mistakes
Whether you’re redesigning your current website or designing a brand new one, there are mistakes that you should ensure you avoid.
A successful website is a well designed website that visitors will want to return to and interact with more. So, if you’re wondering what mistakes should best be avoided, we have compiled a list of 5 erroneous website design methods to keep away from.
1. Clutter or Lack of Direction
Have you ever come across website that has so much text, images, animations, and overall information overload that you’ve had no idea where to go with the website? There's a good chance you left the site without acheiving your initial objective.
Keep your site simple and space out your content so that your visitors know where to look next. Identify the objectives that users will have on your site and test the navigation with these objectives in mind. This is a great way to ensure your website navigation is logical and intuitive.
2. Flash Animations
While there’s nothing inherently bad about Flash, it can severely impact someone’s viewing experience of your site. Excessive Flash can lead to slow down and it also makes your site take longer to load. Additionally, having Flash animations everywhere is disorienting and turns people off.
So if you do use Flash, keep it minimal and only to where it’s appropriate. If your analytics show that alot of people access your site via mobile devices in particular, Apple products, then get rid of you flash componants all together.
Alternatively, you can use HTML5 which allows animations and is also compatible with mobile devices.
3. Bad Navigation
One mistake that plenty of sites make is that of having poor navigation for other pages within their site. Some sites have far too many links which clutter the home page, whereas others lack any real discernible navigation.
Meet in the middle by creating a master navigation that divides your site’s pages up into 5 categories, with each sub-category listed within the respective 5. That way, people will find moving through your site a much easier experience.
Mega-menus are also a great tool for allowing single click navigation to all of your pages.
4. No Search
Regardless of the size of your website, if you’re lacking an internal search bar, then you’re making a website design mistake. A search bar allows users to access specific areas of interest within your site that they may not be able to find through navigating it by other means.
By having a good navigation and a search bar, you’re making your site more accessible and far easier to look through. So don’t even start designing your site without having a search bar in mind.
5. No Clear Explanation of What You Do
You only have to consider your own online behaviour to know that Internet users can give up on a new site very quickly. To ensure that your website retains qualified traffic longer, make sure the key landing pages on your site, state clearly and prominantly, 'What you do'.
Once a user is comforted of what they can expect to find on your site, you increase the chances of them taking further action and navigating further throughout the site.
Promoting your business online is tricky trade and website design is only a small piece of the puzzle. But, by avoiding these common mistakes, you are already on your way to improving your online marketing efforts.
Are there other website redesign mistakes that you have noticed? Feel free to add them in the comments below.
* Image sources: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net and Salvator Vuono / FreeDigitalPhots.net
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