How your website functions and looks impacts the success of your business. If it isn’t user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and responsive across all screen sizes, you can expect a lack of engagement from visitors.
When building out a new website or refreshing an existing one, avoid features that do more harm than good.
Expectation goes a long way with web design. If you close your eyes and picture a desktop website in your head, one of the first things that might come to mind is the navigation. Company logo displayed maybe on the left, links to access more pages listed on the right. The discoverability of your navigation is immediately lowered when you decide to hide links in a hamburger menu. Users want information quickly and easily. By hiding your navigation, you drive people away because they assume what they were looking for isn’t there.
Sliders and carousels are another great example of hiding content. While sliders can be great for sharing images, when using them to share information, there’s a surprisingly low 1% click-through rate. Maybe if the slider auto-rotates it would be more engaging? Add some visual interest to the page? While auto-rotating sliders perform better than static sliders, other issues arise like readability and banner-blindness because users might assume the slider is full of ads. Instead of trying to pack all of your content into a slider, consider alternative layouts, or only sharing the best-performing service or product.
I’m not sure if anyone can honestly say they love getting ads, especially pop-ups. More often than not, pop-up ads are obnoxious, hard to close, and irrelevant to what you were interested in before coming to a site. The issue here mainly lies in when and where. While it’s entirely possible to use pop-ups appropriately, the majority of businesses should consider leaving pop-ups off their website.
The worst intrusive content sin that can be made is the autoplay video (with sound). When you opt-in to using this tactic, you’re pitting marketing potential against annoyance. Best practices around video content are to include a play/pause button and have the video start paused. For the sake of better usability, give users the freedom to choose to watch or listen.
Accessibility is a cornerstone of great website design. There’s no value for businesses, let alone users, in having content that’s hard to see. Over the last five years, low-contrast text is the most common issue users face. With 95% of all website content being typography, it’s important for brands to incorporate a web-friendly font, and ensure that any coloured text being used reach minimum levels of contrast. Limit or ditch the use of your ornate, quirky, or playful font in lieu of one that all users can read easily.
In more cases than not, less is more. Removing unnecessary clutter gives users a clear and direct path through your site. Hierarchy and simplicity go hand-in-hand with web design. By having less to sift through, you can tailor the information and content that visitors see on each page. Your website is the final destination for your service or product. Make it easy for users to find what they need in order to take action.
There’s a lot to consider when creating a website that’s not only visually appealing but also works for your business. Websites ultimately exist to help your audience take action. It’s easy to get lost in the excitement of creating. While marketing teams, designers, and developers are happy to work with you to fulfill your vision, the time and money spent building a dream site that doesn’t consider usability may not give you the results you imagined.
