| Don't let lousy web design make turn your visitors | | | | - Background music. Generally, this is a bad idea. |
| away. Here are 10 common web design mistakes to | | | | Everyone has different taste in music and might not |
| avoid. | | | | like your choice in music. Plus, maybe they don't want |
| - Web page takes too long to load. Not only does | | | | to listen to music at all at that precise moment. |
| this affect user satisfaction it, also, affects Google | | | | There are exceptions, of course. But generally, avoid |
| search rankings, too. | | | | music. |
| - Too much clutter. This includes: irrelevant widgets, | | | | - "About" page is difficult to find. One of the first |
| flashing ads, and excessive graphics in general. With | | | | things audiences new to a web page want to do is |
| so much clutter on the internet in general, it's | | | | find out more about the company behind the |
| particularly, crucial to avoid this. | | | | website. You haven't got much time to keep new |
| - Using too many colours. If in doubt go for one | | | | visitors to your site. Making it difficult for them to |
| colour (with a second shade) used in combination | | | | find "About" doesn't help. |
| with grey (with one or two different shades). Of | | | | - Difficult to navigate. There's no overall overview of |
| course, there are lots of very good exceptions to | | | | website content. |
| this (especially for web designers who are | | | | - There isn't an overall, unified visual design. Pages |
| experienced in colour). But for people who aren't | | | | don't have to be completely uniform in visual design. |
| sure, keep it simple! | | | | But there has to be an element in the visual design |
| - Font mistakes. Too many font types and the font | | | | that unites all the pages. |
| is too small. | | | | Most importantly in the web design planning process, |
| - Text lines to close together. Not just difficult to | | | | keep your audience in mind - who they are and what |
| read. Looks ugly, too. | | | | sorts of things would put them off if they were |
| - Uneven alignment. Uneven alignment of chunks of | | | | experiencing your site. |
| textual information looks bad. | | | | |