You've spent hours designing a beautiful new website. You've put your heart and soul into every pixel, and you're finally ready to launch it to the world. That's when you realise something's missing: a website that is user friendly! It turns out that small design mistakes can make all the difference between success and failure. So, if you want people to keep visiting your site (and buying stuff from it) then it's important to make sure that everything is just right. We've listed a few common DIY website mistakes below so you can avoid them when building yours.
Too many colours on your website
You need to choose your colour palette. An effective website is one that uses a limited number of colours and makes them stand out by making sure they're used sparingly.
Colours should be used in a consistent way across all platforms - for example, if you use blue on your website, don't use red on Twitter or Facebook. If your brand colour is green, make sure it's green everywhere!
You also want to ensure that the colours you choose are web safe. The easiest way to do this is by using an online tool such as Coolors or ColourLovers' Color Combination Generator which allows you to generate palettes based on three colours (more info here). It's important that none of these colours clash with any other elements like text or background images elsewhere on the page because otherwise visitors will have trouble reading content clearly without getting distracted by garish combinations around them.
No clear navigation
The navigation menu is one of the most important elements on a website and should be carefully crafted. You want to make sure that your visitors can find the information they are looking for with ease, but also that it's easy for them to navigate around your site to learn more about you or contact you if they have any questions.
The first thing is to get rid of clutter. Your navigation bar should be clean, spaced out, and easy to read.
Additionally, don't bury important links in lists within lists. Instead place these items at the top level so they're easy to find whenever someone lands on any page within the site (and again: no clutter). The same goes for social media icons—make sure these are all visible right away without having to scroll down through several layers of menus just so someone can connect with you on Facebook!
Not a responsive website
Responsive design is an important aspect of any website. It's not just about mobile, either. Responsive design is about the entire experience, including the user and content.
If you're not familiar with responsive design, it's a technique that allows your website to adapt its layout to match different screen sizes. This means that content will be rearranged so that it can be viewed properly on any device from computers to smartphones, and tablets—no matter what their size or operating system (OS).
Responsive design has become more important as people have begun using multiple devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets at once when accessing online content. Most users now access websites from multiple devices throughout their day—and in some cases even use multiple operating systems on one device!
Lack of SEO
The biggest mistake we see people making when it comes to their website is not investing in SEO.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it's the process of optimizing your website so that search engines can find you. In other words, if you want people to find your website, then you need SEO.
Search engine algorithms are constantly changing and evolving—so it's crucial that your site stays up to date with these changes in order to stay relevant and visible in search results.
Too much written content
If you're not careful, you can end up with a website that has so much content on it that the user is overwhelmed. This is a problem because:
Images on the site are the incorrect size
The size of your images is important. If they are too small, the page will look pixelated and blurry. If they are too big, you’re wasting bandwidth on a larger file that doesn’t need to be there.
Images should be sized correctly for the screen they are being displayed on as well as their purpose. If you want your image to fill up the entire browser window, make sure it isn’t huge! You don’t want visitors having to scroll horizontally across their screens when all they want to do is click on something or read some text!
Additionally, make sure the image resolution matches what you need it for: web vs print vs digital marketing campaigns vs social media posts etc…
Lack of Accessibility
Small improvements can make a big difference to the success of your website.
If you're a DIYer, then it's likely that you don't have the time or money to spend on a professional website. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to have a good website. In fact, there are plenty of things that all DIYers can do themselves to improve their websites and make them more user friendly and aesthetically pleasing.
Here are our top tips for making your website as good as possible:
Conclusion
We hope that this article has been useful. If you’re thinking about making improvements to your website and want some advice, just give us a shout! We’re happy to help.
