Check Out These Five Website Design Drawbacks 

Website design is a crucial component of any digital marketing strategy. It is many potential clients’ first impression of your business, it spreads information and educates others about your business, and becomes an important link in connecting users directly to you! It’s therefore clear that having a well-designed, usable website that users will enjoy is more important than ever. While it may be impossible to design an impeccable site, avoiding common mishaps can at least give you a headstart. Let us explain some common missteps when it comes to website design, with five points to keep in mind:

1 – Slow Loading Speed – Before a website visitor even gets the chance to see your website, they may decide to leave if your landing page doesn’t load in a timely fashion. Page loading speed is of high importance, as viewer patience is fickle and anything beyond a few moments will drastically impact their experience. Check your page loading times and try to cut down on unnecessary page elements, especially on your landing page and homepage! This will help you to maintain viewer attention and hopefully ensure none of your website pages will load beyond the average time.

2 – Broken Pages – Right alongside page loading speed is ensuring none of your pages are broken! While if your page loads quickly is important, it’s also crucial that once it does load, it’s not broken. After all, what are the use of your website’s pages if they don’t work? Check your website frequently for broken pages or links and upon discovery of any, make sure that they are fixed as soon as possible. 

3 – Content Publishing and Relevance – Once a user decides to view your website, it’s important that they find the information they’re looking for! Your website should have basic business information, including not only all of your contact and location information, but content dealing with your products and services, an about page, and hopefully more! Best case scenario, your website should also contain a blog! It’s important that all of this information is correct, relevant to your business, and updated frequently.

4 – Poor Page Layout – While having content on your website is important, it’s just as crucial that it’s laid out in a readable, understandable fashion. Making your page layout difficult to understand can be a major setback! The layout of your web pages should make sense to your users. Use similar font families that are easy to read, with page headings and subtitles that stand out. Your content should be grouped in readable paragraphs, separated with media when it makes sense, but overall kept in one column that’s easy to find that flows when scrolling down. 

5 – Difficult Navigation – After visiting one of your site’s pages and enjoying its content, your ideal user’s next move may be looking at your page navigation to learn and explore more. However, if your navigation is hard to understand, find, or read, then it may end up discouraging a user from attempting to use. Ensure your website has a navigation bar, clearly visible near the top of every page. The font should be readable, each page should be outlined, and it should be made obvious that it contains links to lead your viewers around. Many websites choose to have the options change color when hovered over, to make this clear.

Have you seen any of these drawbacks on your own website? Whether you see them or not, users may be having a hard time using it! Let the experts of i3 take a look at your site to analyze it and its performance! There is always room for improvement and we’re happy to help you!