Insights / Website
We've all been there—our favourite website crashes, or it gets so slow that we couldn't go through our Facebook timeline. Frustrated, we close the tab and vow to never return to that site again. That's the internet's fault, right? Not so fast. Design is to blame.
The UX Design of a website is what makes it attractive, interesting and special. But, do you know it can also cause it to crash, or eat up its time and speed? Here are 6 UX Mistakes you should avoid preventing your website from getting all these problems.
1. Awful colour contrast
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Colour contrast refers to the calculative difference between the foreground and background colours. In simpler terms, it indicates how visually similar or different they are. Generally, there is an optimal ratio for the best colour contrast which is 4.5:1.
If a website is designed with awful colour contrast, such as low contrast on the CTA button, inconsistent colour palette or no distinction between the primary and secondary buttons, the user interface will be dull and confusing. Not to mention causing eye strain when reading the web copies.
Hence, before one even starts to design the website, they have to analyze the brand colour and create a colour palette around it. A UX colour palette can make or break the website. At this stage, it is essential to test and check if the colours are accessible to each other and if they could visually communicate well together. Keep in mind the saturation, brightness and sharpness of the colours as well. Commonly, high saturation and sharpness are bad for UX as they will spoil the quality of the website.
Other than that, dark mode is another key thing to note as it has become rising in popularity among the users. According to a survey involving 2500 androids, 81.9% of the respondents use dark mode on their mobiles and apps. Some tips when designing dark mode are to use desaturated colours, avoid using pure black and use elevation.
2. No balance between aesthetic and functionality
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When it comes to website design, we often prefer a fancier and dashing design with lots of features and interactions. But, an aesthetic UX design is up to no good when its functionality is horrible.
Avoid splashing all your creativity all over your website and in the end, make it hard to load and navigate. Moreover, overwhelming your website with HD images, videos, graphic designs and interactive elements could compromise the page loading time and speed. In turn, it can cause frustration to the users and increase your website’s bounce rate.
On the other hand, if your website is all about functionality, you may risk boring your visitors as well. Thus, you should always find a balance between the aesthetic and usability of the website. Your website should be unique and visually captivating with clear navigation and useful information for the users.
3. Ignore the content
Regardless of having awesome UX, you need valuable and effective content to retain and attract visitors to your website. You should never ignore the importance of content marketing on your website as it can directly affect your SEO.
Users habitually turn to the Internet for informational and educational facts. Therefore, you should consistently update your website with credible, reliable and high-quality content. This includes publishing blogs, news or articles related to your field, revising old content to keep them up-to-date and relevant as well as polishing the spellings and grammar.
4. Too search engines focus & forget about people
Related to creating content on your site, you should also keep in mind that you are writing for the users, not search engines. We understand that it can be very easy to get obsessed over SEO rankings and keywords in this competitive field, but it can vouch for it to be a critical mistake over time. This is because, at the end of the day, users are the ones search engines are most concerned about. Their main priority is to create a seamless, pleasant and fruitful search experience for the users.
Hence, you should avoid stuffing keywords on the same page of your website. Instead, plan, distribute and organise all of them accordingly throughout the web pages. Make sure that they are relevant and meaningful. Another goal is to focus on creating an exceptional user experience for real people. With smooth and seamless navigation and interaction on your website, search engines will also reward you as users enjoy visiting your website.
5. Did not take into account the negative space
If your website is cluttered with bold headings, features, graphic designs and elements, you might want to consider KonMari Method to increase the negative spaces. Negative space or white space is the area of the design layout where it is empty. Do take note that it can be of any colour, not necessarily white.
Negative space allows a sense of air in your web design where it is breathable and does not cluster with unnecessary stuff. It also makes your main point stand out. Imagine getting into a room full of piles of clothes, books and furniture. That is just what an over-clustered website looks like.
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The Google Search Page beautifully demonstrate how a web page with good negative space looks like, with the main tool (search bar) located right in the middle surrounded by sufficient white space.
While integrating various features and elements into one single page may seem like a good thing, oftentimes, it may pose a distraction for the users. When all the elements are trying to grab your users’ attention at the same time, users may lose focus and not be able to find what they intend to look for. This would waste your users’ time and effort in finding what they want.
6. Not designed for responsive
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In general, web users have an attention span of 8 seconds and mobile users have 2 seconds. If your website is not designed for responsiveness, you would definitely risk losing these users over time and speed.
A UX responsiveness could refer to their mobile responsiveness on different types and sizes of tablets. If your website responds well and is able to cater and adjust itself suitably according to the kind of tablet the users use, then you’ve got yourself a great UX.
Another thing needed to bear in mind is the speed and time taken for your website to fully load the largest picture. In Google SEO terms, they are the Largest Contentful Picture (LCP), First Contentful Picture (FCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). All of these have to do with the loading time and speed of your website as well as how the users interact with it. In Google Core Update 2021, these are all the new features that will be taken into account for SEO rankings. Hence, the importance of website responsiveness.
In conclusion, you should focus on making simple and easy to use websites. Never add unnecessary elements to complicate things. Alternatively, you could also always reach out to a web design agency if you need some professional assistance.
