Top Web Design Mistakes You Must Avoid

As you use the internet, you probably notice that some websites just aren't attractive. While quality web design isn't difficult, many website owners fail to achieve it. It's important to create a website that is user friendly. After all, you want to keep visitors coming back. A poorly designed site will quickly drive visitors away. To ensure you design your website the right way, here is a look at some of the top website design mistakes you need to avoid.

Mistake #1 - Providing Poor Navigation

One of the biggest mistakes to avoid when designing your website is providing poor navigation. If visitors are unable to get around your site easily, they probably will simply leave and find another website. Good navigation can actually keep visitors on your website longer. While you want to keep navigation simple, it needs to be very effective as well. Go with navigation that is user friendly, since it can actually make or break your site.

Mistake #2 - Making Visitors Wonder Where They've Landed

Don't make visitors wonder where they've landed. Each page on your site should clearly show visitors that they are on your website. This is especially important when visitors land on pages without first coming to your home page. Make sure every page links back to your home pages as well.

Mistake #3 - Very Long Pages

Very long scrolling pages are another big mistake to avoid when working on web design. Most users aren't going to want to keep scrolling unless they really think there is something good below. It's a good idea to split up pages if you can. If splitting the page won't work, make sure you have navigation and content options at the top of the page to make it easy to navigate through the long page.

Mistake #4 - Slow Download Times

People today don't have a lot of patience. They want to get the information needed quickly. This means that slow download times are going to be costly. If your website takes a long time to load, most visitors will simply leave and find another website that meets their needs. This means that you need to focus on fast download times when working on your site's website design. This can be done by reducing image file sizes and by limiting the number of images used on each page of your site.

Mistake #5 - Including Too Many Ads

Visitors don't come to your site to see the ads. While ads offer you a great way to earn money, they can be distracting to visitors. Using ads is fine, but make sure you concentrate your designing efforts on the content of the site, not on the ads. Make sure you have a good balance between your content and the ads you include on your pages.

Web Design

Web design deals with the area of designing a good website and in the long run updating and maintaining. With the internet boom, every company wants to have an online footprint and a website is the best way to showcase one's skills and business and kindle the curiosity of potential customers.

The layout of a website depends on its functionality and use and hence what applies to one industry cannot be generalised to others. But at the same time, it is important to choose a good web design company to ensure that one's ideas are translated into reality and a friendly and positive image is created in the virtual world. In businesses where the customer base is worldwide, a website is the first gateway to showcase the reputation and capability of a company.

Every web page needs to be functional and aesthetic while at the same time being easy to navigate and comprehend. Content needs to be precisely written with good sentence structures and grammar to ensure that the viewer interest is not lost. It is easy to put in fancy visuals and have all the colours in the palette incorporated on a webpage but essentially, the message needs to be delivered. Incorporating SEO or search engine optimization ensures that the website is noticed by search engines and as the number of visits to a website increase, better are the chances of business expansion and reputation enhancement. Thus a good business needs a work of online art to showcase itself.

Web design companies need to be chosen carefully and the following points are some of the key indicators that can help you make a good choice.

• Experience in the business area
• Market reputation and promised capability
• Client Portfolio
• Responsiveness to requirements and demands
• Delivery time
• Latest project samples
• Proven track record in the given domain
• Company policies and client interaction procedures of the web design company
• Extent of services offered in case of future expansion
• Website maintenance & redesign services
• Cost effectiveness, efficiency and value for money

Thus when making a choice, one has to strike a judicious balance with one's own budget and requirements in mind. At the same time, the web design company must be capable of translating ones vision with minimum supervision and guidance since frequent discussions take a toll of valuable time.

Some companies have made patented software so that the clients can communicate their requirements effectively. Through this program, the clients can decide the basic content and layout of the website. Everything right from the number of tabs and pages required to the type of design, animation etc. Thus a fairly accurate idea of the client requirements is got without any hassles. Once the requirements are got, work begins earnestly towards finalising the design. Using this kind of advanced technologies has helped companies cover greater distance within a short time under all weather conditions!! After the initial design, client meetings are held and real time testing carried out to ensure complete customer satisfaction.

The best way to attract traffic to your website is by using a good SEO (search Engine Optimising) provider in your city who has a good reputation. SEO is not merely adding keywords but also deals with enhancing the content and capture the imagination of the readers.

Is Website Design an Art?

There is a sharp controversy among the artists, designers and experts: is good website design an art? To know it well, we should understand the difference between art and design? What are the characteristics that separate one from the other? Though, both the artists and designers create visual compositions, using the best of their knowledge, experience and expertise, but the purpose of their doing so is absolutely different.

Now let me discuss on these points:

1. Good art inspires and evokes emotion. Good design motivates.

A good artist starts painting on a blank canvas and keeps doing so until he can draw a complete picture of his feeling and thinking, taking the elements that he thinks would definitely help him sharing his feeling with the audiences in the most effective ways. An artist's intention is to build a strong emotional bond between him and his audience.

On the contrary, a designer's liberty is restricted by pre-assigned message, idea, action, and the purpose of making the design. He has a fixed point to start and end it. A designer's job is to discover something with the elements that already exist and serve specific purposes. His purpose is to motivate the audience to let them feel a desire for doing something like buying a product or using a service.

2. Good Art is interpreted. Good design is understood.

Art being a creation has no limitation. It cannot be circumscribed by any, definition, explanation and interpretation. Therefore people with different opinions, cultures, tastes, and levels of education explain an art-work in different ways and viewpoints.

Say for example, the great art-work Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci has been interpreted in many ways by the Romantics, Scientists and Skeptics. Scientists say that Mona Lisa's smiling is nothing but an illusion created by peripheral vision. Romantics say Mona Lisa is in love. Skeptics say nothing happens.

In contrast, the purpose of designing is to convey a message and motivate audience to do something. So a designer's sole purpose is to make people understand a message: what is the usefulness of his products or services.

3. Good Art Is a Taste. Good Design Is an Opinion.

Art is a taste that results in various opinions. Say for example, a piece of art seems to one good or bad depending upon his taste, liking and disliking. If he is a champion of modern art, a piece of traditional art will seem to him age old and obsolete.

Design, too, depends upon taste. But the difference is that a design is considered successful and good only when it can fulfill its purpose of motivating people for doing something.

Web Design for Tradies

With more people relying on the internet to find information on local businesses, there is an important on having a professional web design on the different websites for tradies. Professionals in any industry will need to offer potential customers a method to review their business and to fully understand what types of services they offer. No matter if you are a handyman, mechanic or any other professional that focuses on a single trade you need to pay close attention to your website.

The layout of the websites for tradies doesn't have to be too complicated. However, they do have some essentials that need to be offered to ensure that consumers have all their questions answered, so you can boost sales and to be a step above your competition.

This begins with the home page that customers land on. It will be on this page that you need to pique the interest of your customer and to encourage them to look over the website. The web design should be clean and to the point, without having large blocks of text to read. Links to additional pages should be easy to find and there should be a logical approach to finding the information a customer needs.

On one of these links, you will need to have the products and services you offer. It will be important to give information on the services that you are qualified to do. In addition to the main jobs you can do, you should suggest that you can do more and encourage a customer to take a moment to contact you through your contact page.

Another important section on your website will be the about us page. On this page, you are going to give an overview of your experience and your years in business. It will be vital that you list any certifications, licenses and other items help you to stand out in your industry. This is a place where you sell your business, while giving potential customers an idea of who they will be working with. If you have a guarantee on your work, this is a great place to list it.

If possible, you should have reviews, testimonials from satisfied clients and even photographs of your projects listed. This will help to give potential customers some information on how you run your business and a general idea of the experiences they can have with you. You can also allow for customers to come in and add in their own experience in this section when their job is finished.

One other area you will want to ensure that your web design has will be a frequently asked questions section. Here, you can provide information on items you are asked about regularly in phone calls. You can also offer some resources that people can use to help them with projects they are working on.

Every professional tradesperson should have a quality website that helps to boost their business. If you aren't sure where to begin, you may want to speak with a professional web design company to get you started.