When you visit a website, it’s usually because you want to buy something, learn something, or see something. You Google what you have in mind, click a link that seems relevant, and if you’re lucky, everything you were searching for unfolds in front of you. But what if you get to a website and you can’t figure out how to view the products? Or the font is way too small, so you can barely read the information on the site? What if you are interested, but you can’t find a way to contact anyone? These are all too common mistakes that people make when creating a website. Here are a few more examples of mistakes made in web design and how to avoid them:

Difficult to Scan

Having good copy is an important part of creating a website. However, it is important to remember that users will not always read text from top to bottom. People’s eyes tend to jump from place to place when they visit a website, typically looking at whatever catches their eye first. Have a few points of focus for users to look at and use descriptions with your headers. Any other text should be short and simple; if it can be cut down, cut it.

Tiny Links

Hyperlinks are made to be clicked, so it should be easy to do so. If your links are too small, they will not only be more difficult to click, but they may not even be recognizable as a clickable link at all. Fix this issue by making the link bigger, or by increasing the padding around the link.

Unnecessary Pagination

Pagination is often used on websites that have many products to display or photos in a gallery, which is sensible because the page would be much slower without it. Sometimes we see blog articles split into several pages, even when it could all easily fit onto one. Many times, websites do this to increase page views. While this may put a few more dollars in their pockets, it is not desirable for users. It also negatively affects SEO because the content is split into several pages, so each page holds fewer keywords about the topic.

Duplicate Page Titles

The titles of your web pages are more important than you may think. Descriptive titles give users an idea of what each specific page contains. Web page titles are also shown on the search engine results pages, so if your title is relevant to what someone is searching for, they will most likely give your page a visit. Descriptive page titles are also beneficial for your SEO; search engines use titles to decide how relevant your page is to a search term.

If all of this information goes right over your head, or these items are among many other mistakes that you have realized you are making, contact Red Shark Digital, a marketing firm in Greenville, NC.

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