A lot of professionals in the web design and development industry have a question and that is: what is their priority whenever a website is being designed? Do they want to make it look good? Do they want to add exciting and fascinating effects? Or is it something else they wish to add to make the website unique?

As for experienced professionals, they would love prioritizing website’s functionality and its user experience. The interface is quite important, but the website’s functionality carries more weight. Moreover, web design teams need to deliver their ideas or their product to the user in a clean and transparent way.

Still, how can companies create a trustworthy website?

The key question falls on the website’s design. Whether the company is a startup or an established firm, they should have a web designer to help them with their website’s design. It would be best if the web designers can collaborate with developers from the beginning with a top-notch online design cooperation toolkit.

It is never easy to make a good website that is both functional and beautiful. Experienced consultants in user experience can help companies analyze behavior of their target users, make and implement an effective user interface with the goal of taking the product’s user experience to a new level. 

This is what helps organizations achieve worthwhile and robust business outcomes.

Moreover, it is also important to know the common mistakes in web design along with the way they can be avoided effectively. Those who are feeling confused don’t need to be because they will now see what a good website should look like and how examples of bad web design are good learning points.

Differences between a good web design and a bad one

With time, trends in web design change and so do design principles. At times, the ones present on the web are quite hard to define. Yet there are some golden rules that stand the winds of time. Here are some worthwhile principles of good web design:

• Easy to understand navigation.
• Proper animations.
• A top-notch color scheme.
• Clean website layout.
• A user interface that is quite appealing.
• Choosing a design that is as per both the topic and the theme.
• Keeping content and design elements well organized.

These principles are key rules of web design. They clearly indicate that a worthwhile web design should be pleasing in aesthetic terms, user friendly and easy to understand. A good website should also provide a worthwhile user experience.

Some Examples of Bad Web Design Each Brand, Business and Company alike Should Avoid

Here are some examples of websites that have deployed a really bad website design, and some remedies to avoid them will be discussed too.

Lack of clear messaging

This ranks among the worst mistakes in web design. If a website was made without providing a clear message related to its purpose then no user will stay on it. Users should instantly know the business’s name, their portfolio, the products/services they sell and the purpose of their existence.

Let us look at the example of 3D Mailbox. The page is like a blog with no direction. If a user takes time to go through it then they will understand that it is a type of an email software. However, this cannot be determined easily.

This website indeed lacks a clear message. No user is able to learn more about a product. Visitors need to click on other links to learn more. Each thing appearing on the page before users need to go further is not worth it.

The initial section of the website should have a Hero Image, the business’s name and a clear indication of what they are. Moreover, a kind of navigation should also be offered.

Visitors to a website these days will quickly form opinions about the business in one second. If users need to scroll through the site or click on other links to find out what it is about, then they will leave it for another one.

Clutter is a true eyesore

Other than a clear message, the website must have a clear layout. If the web page is cluttered, it becomes hard to navigate. This causes visitors to leave.

This is why Arngren.net is despised. It is a classifieds website containing listings thrown together in an unstructured manner. The listings are not sorted into categories and they are cluttered together like a salad.

Why are Amazon and AliExpress successful? Because they have decluttered their pages, feature multiple products and services in organized categories. They organized things in grids instead of jumbling them up together. 

If a page is cluttered haphazardly with links, it will distract visitors the way a website does so with floating ads, automatically loading videos, pop-ups and other distracting elements deterring visitors away from web pages.

Web pages lacking mobile optimization are a big minus

A lot of internet traffic across the globe is now coming from mobile devices. Yet some websites are still made for computers instead of being mobile optimized. A website not being mobile optimized will hence create a problematic user experience.

Websites today now include responsive design and this allows the web page to adjust elements based on the device’s screen width. The website might also hide elements, change the fonts or remove backgrounds when smaller screens are detected.

Above is an example of an American business named The Wedding Lens. Another example to be shared is of DeQue University.

Try checking them on the mobile phone’s browser and users will see that these pages won’t fit on the screens of mobile devices. This is hence a cause of concern, as a vast majority of internet traffic comes from these devices.

Users can try visiting these sites and adjust their widths in the browser. The browser window can become small but the page does not change its layout. The text is hence not readable without excessive scrolling.

A good example of a responsive website is Microsoft, not only does it respond well to mobile device screens but is also made quite well in terms of aesthetics and functionality.

A lack of Simple Links and Navigation Process Is Another Big NO

One of the biggest features of a website is its navigation and this becomes self-evident. Whenever a user logs onto a site, they would understand what they can do next and what actions should they take to reach their destination. 

Their destination should be eye-catching and be at the page’s top. However, a non user-friendly navigation will only confuse users to a great extent.

Gatesnfences.com is an American provider of products and services related to gates. Its layout is quite vintage, and it is something that is quite an eyesore.

Unclickable Buttons and Unreadable Text Should Be Avoided

At times, web browsers can be quite demanding and menus on some websites are not clickable. This happens when websites are not optimized for the mobile platform. When elements are not adjusted for smaller screens, they can overlap and become unreadable.

The NMG group has employed a very good web design with a very good Hero Image. However, the text and background images are quite overwhelming. WIth the site’s background image covered by other elements, the whole interface is overrun by unnecessary elements.

This is where Nike improved its game, it not only has deployed a very good template but also top-notch functionality making the website look good, work good and feel good.

Conclusion

The examples mentioned are quite easy to avoid, and web design teams now understand what they are looking for. Yet implementing needed changes often require technical expertise of the highest order.

Top notch web design and web development agencies often provide clientele the aid of experienced UI and UX designers as they understand what is needed to create a worthwhile website experience. Those who wish to ensure their websites are not like the examples mentioned, they should work together with their web design agencies/teams to ensure everything goes right.