By Jim Clanin
You don’t get very much time to make a good first impression in person, and you have far less time to do so online. Your website has to have a design that captures attention quickly to avoid losing clients and customers. Here are six web design mistakes to avoid so your online visitors will stay on your website longer than it takes them to read a Twitter message.
1. Know how your audience looks at your page
Like in advertisements and marketing materials, people tend to view things the same way and in the same pattern. According to eye tracking research performed and reported by the Nielsen Norman Group, people tend to look at websites, articles, ecommerce
sites and online searches in an “F” pattern. Knowing the location of where to put your most important information like phone number, calls to action and links, can have a positive effect on retaining visitors on your site. Your audience is more likely to see what you put at the top of your website or in the top corners of the page, so be sure to use that space effectively.
2. Choose the right images
Like meeting someone with a smile on their face can make you feel welcome, a website with positive images can have the same influence and impact on how visitors feel and respond to your website. Keeping your audience in mind, consider using positive photos in relation to the industry. For example, if you are designing a website for a veterinarian, include pictures and images of happy pet owners with happy and healthy pets. Positive images give a positive feeling so consider including happy, smiling people.
3. Design for everyone
There are plenty of audience segments, including people living with disabilities, you think about when designing a website, however, many companies and designers leave potential customers on the table. Use Alt tags so a screen reader can interpret the images on your website. If you have videos, create subtitles and transcripts. Describe all of your links in detail. Web design should be inclusive for all audiences.
4. People see things differently
Approximately 0.5 percent of women and eight percent of men experience some degree of color blindness. Red-green color blindness is the most common form; however, most sites and web designers include red significantly for error messages or call to action messaging. By using red, a red-green color blind website visitor my not notice an error message if they fill out a form if the red color blends into the background. Use colors with imagery and symbols to grab the attention of users.
5. Know your target audience
Knowing your customer’s and potential customers, what they want to see, how they search, and the style of their industry is very important. Whether you’re targeting housewives, bankers, accountants or pet owners, the target audience should command many of the sites design elements, from colors, to font sizes and images. Look at what the competition is doing, and stay on-trend instead of falling behind the times and industry.
6. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
It is anticipated that in 2015, more online searches will be done on mobile devices than desktop computers, which means optimizing your website for mobile users is more critical than ever before. Your site must be designed to be user-friendly on all mobile devices, regardless of the target audience.
Understanding and avoiding these six common website design mistakes can help you create a better user experience and turn more site visitors into customers. For a complimentary website design review, contact DoubleDome Web Technologies, experts in web design for more than 14 years.
