A site needs to work well for its visitors. It doesn’t matter what the aim of it is. Whether it’s a source of information for people who share a passion, a sales-driven marketing tool, or just something to polish up your brand. If your site doesn’t work, it’s not going to fulfil your goals. If it features any of these flaws, it’s not going to work.
Picture sourced by Nguyen Nguyen
Confusion
This is the only point here that’s going to be purely about design, but it needs to be here because it is the most common reason that the user experience of a site comes to an abrupt end. If a web page is overflowing with content, using multiple images with little cohesion, or loaded with too many navigation options, it will confuse visitors. They won’t know where their eyes should go, where they should click next or why they should care. Tidy up your navigation by keeping it sparse, using only the content and only the visual branding that needs to be there. Ensure your navigation bar is placed somewhere a user would expect it (not in the middle of a page) and that it’s simple to use. As few immediate options as possible, with intuitive text that lets people know what they should expect to see on the other side.
Picture sourced by Markus Spiske raumrot.com
Unresponsiveness
In today’s internet, a growing number of people aren’t using PCs or Macs to access your site at all. They’re using mobile devices, so a website should always be ready for the experience on that device. Resizing the whole site isn’t going to do it. You need to be responsive, tailoring it to a mobile user’s experience. If your home contains, for instance, a listing or articles with images and blurbs, think of how painful that would make the browsing experience on mobile devices.
Instability
Not that your users are going to care about how your site is designed if it’s barely working for them, to begin with. Avoiding downtime isn’t the only reason you need to ensure you have a reliable host. You need to look at different packages offered on pricing pages from places like PAC Web Hosting and see how much you can get hosted. If you use Cloud storage to ensure you get extra space for images and videos, then choose one that can scale your data allocation to your needs. Don’t let a site become unstable because you neglected to ensure you can pay to host it all.
Picture sourced by Negative Space
Insecurity
Keeping a website secure of viruses and other malicious agents is essential. If you’re using advertisers, then vet them thoroughly to see that their own ads and web spaces are secure and trustworthy. If you run an ecommerce site or you want people to leave details of any kind with you, you need to go further in securing the site. Investing in data encryption, for instance, is crucial. If you allow commenting on your site, Captcha codes can stop spammed messages with dubious links from infesting the comment section.
When it’s so easy and so relied upon to use sites as the virtual representation of ourselves and our businesses, mistakes like those above can’t be tolerated. Make sure yours is in a fit state before you even think about asking people to use it.