5 things to try and avoid on your Website!
Do you ever look at websites that companies have paid for that are just over the top, tacky and overall irritating to just be on? We all know you have seen one; we have too. There are 5 BIG things you should avoid in the design and the final product.
Contact form pop-up upon entry
Don’t you just hate it when you visit a site to browse and the first thing you are greeted with before you can do anything is a pop-up form asking you something like “Sign up to our Newsletter to receive all the latest and greatest news!” and it just fills up the whole screen or sits right in the middle, obscuring your view. Yeah, nobody wants to be hassled as soon as they click on your site and especially not about signing up to newsletters etc. we all understand this is done to get extra traffic and contact details to advertise offers through but feeling pressured from the first moment of entering a site, people are going to bail! Fast! If you are going to have a pop-up form of some kind then you can at least keep it out of the way, maybe in the corner of the screen and don’t make it too large. The other alternative would be to put an X button on the pop-up for anyone who doesn’t want to sign up, giving the user control of what they do and where they go on your site is essential.
Auto play functions
When I go on a website I could be anywhere, with technology this sophisticated I could be on your site on a phone, tablet, laptop, computer etc. so if I arrive on your site and then audio starts to blast out of the speakers then firstly I will be startled, secondly anyone around me will be startled and most importantly I, the user will be in a sticky situation! It can be good to have an introductory video on your home page or have some nice background music for those who are on your site but if you are going to have any of those features then make sure that the audio is not too loud or too low in quality. Ideally, I would say avoid auto play entirely to be on the safe side.
Snail-paced loading times
Nobody wants to load up your website and then…keeping loading up your website, yes you may have a wonderous amount of helpful and exciting content on you site but no one will wait for 5 minutes just to look at it all. When putting content on your site, test how long it takes to load and be conscious of how you would feel if you were a potential customer/client experiencing that load time.
Hidden navigation/Information
There are many creative ways to build your navigation menus/buttons/links but you must remember, if we can’t find them how will we use them?! Make sure that all the information on your site’s pages is accessible and visible otherwise it is going to waste. Keep any navigation menus easily noticeable and usable and links should be highlighted or in a different font colour to stand out.
Confusing text formats
On the other end of the spectrum to the last point, have links noticeable and different to the rest of the text is fine and dandy but don’t go format crazy. Too many times have I seen websites with text that looks like a link but it goes nowhere…sometimes it is designed to be a link but just has not been finished yet and that’s acceptable I suppose but other times (even in bullet lists) the designers have formatted a word or phrase to look like a link. This can confuse pretty much everyone and if done repeatedly on the same site just causes frustration and seems high unprofessional.
Conclusion
These might not be some of the biggest and baddest things that you can find on a site but they can make it lack that professional, high quality feeling or just seriously anger your potential customers/clients. Little things can change a lot about how people experience your site so be careful with what you do and how you do it!
