What Not To Do On Your Website Pages
Designing the perfect page for your website is not an easy task. You need to keep in mind that there are plenty of mistakes you can do. Some of them are design mistakes and others are mistakes with the content.
But although it is not an easy task, having perfectly structured pages is essential. That way you guarantee that your website fulfills its purpose and the investment of time and money you have put in it is worth it.
Our opinion is that one of the best ways to learn how to do something is by knowing what not to do. That is why we have created a lift with the worst mistakes you can make on your pages.
Non-contrasting colors
A good designer would never do such a mistake, but we often see it in people that do the design themselves. When you choose a background with a color that is totally not contrasting with the color of your text, you make your content totally not readable for your visitors. Imagine putting blue text on a purple background.
The right way to do it is by combining two contrasting colors. This way you guarantee that your visitors will easily read your content without causing any trouble to their sight. A great online tool that can help you develop a color scheme for your site is Coolors. It lets you generate your own scheme or you can browse through popular color combinations.
Text on an image background
Another huge mistake is to put your content directly on an image background. Just like with the previous one, doing so you make it very difficult for the visitors to read the text, meaning that they will actually give up.
Of course, that does not mean that you cannot put an image for a background. One way to go for that is by creating boxes with solid colors and then putting the text within them. That way your visitors will not be distracted by the background and your text will still be readable. You can check out how we have done that in our Homedesk template.
Your text is too wide or too narrow
When putting the text on your homepage (or on every other page, in fact), make sure that it is not longer than 60 characters per line. If you make it longer, your visitors will have hard time focusing on the text. On the other hand, too narrow lines are also tiring for the eyes as the reader has to go to a new row way too often.
Difficult to read fonts
You may think that putting a fancy font on your homepage will make you look cooler, but you are making a huge mistake, in fact. Using a difficult to read font will frustrate your readers and they will not read your content, neither visit any of the other pages of your website.
Make sure also that your text has enough line spacing and the size is not too small or too big.
If you use Oxxy, you can easily adjust your font through the elements menu as shown on the GIF below.
Too much scrolling
Another mistake we often see, is that the website content is so long that you have to scroll and scroll until you reach the end. The ideal case is no more than two scrolls. Everything beyond that will bore your visitors and they will not scroll and see it.
Make sure that you put your most important content in on the top. That is your slogan, short description, a bit of product information and a call-to-action.
Too much text
You cannot avoid putting big chunks of text always, but when it is not absolutely necessary, do not do it. People tend to avoid reading lots of text and the better idea to capture their attention is by including visuals whenever possible.
For example, if you have a website with information for a product or service that you offer, try to put images or videos, instead of long, comprehensive descriptions. This way your visitors will not be bored and you can easily capture their attention. On the other hand, always make sure that your pages do not lack information. One of the things that put off visitors easily is when they get to a page and do not know what it is about.
Things that autoplay
A lot of people put videos or music files on their pages and then make them automatically start when a visitor goes to that certain page. You may think something like this will make your website cooler, but we all remember that last time when we were listening to music, went to a new website and it took us ages to realize where that strange noise was coming from and how we can turn it off.
So, unless your goal is to irritate visitors (and we most certainly believe that is not the case), do not put your videos or songs on autoplay.
Inappropriate style of writing
When writing or proof reading the content of your website pages make sure first that the grammar and punctuation are perfect. Not paying attention to these details will not only make your visitors not read your text, but also indicate them that you are not credible enough.
The next important aspect is that your text are not written in your industry jargon. No matter if you write the copy yourself or use a copywriter, make sure that everything is understandable by people who are not part of your industry. Leave the industry jargon to industry meetings and do not use it on your website pages.
Broken links
Having no links on your web pages is not a very good option, but having bad links is even worse. You need to constantly check that your links do not end up in error pages. That will only show your visitors that you do not care about your content and you leave it outdated.
