Poorly designed websites are now being exposed. Thus, understanding web design mistakes is essential to keeping your creativity on track. Whether building a new website from scratch or providing an exclusive update to a digital presence, avoiding design mishaps can enhance website performance and attract potential customers.
Key Takeaways:
Here are 10 common website mistakes that designers should know and avoid.
Nothing can make users leave before the page fully opens more than a slow-loading website. This not only harms user experience but also increases bounce rates and damages the website’s reputation. Factors contributing to slow loading time include large file sizes, outdated code, inefficient caching, and excessive plugins.
Websites should optimize media files by compressing images and videos, and minimize heavy scripts to improve loading times.
Also Read: Top 10 AI to Design Website Layouts Like a Pro
An unresponsive design occurs when a website layout fails to adapt to various screen sizes. This is a crucial issue since most internet traffic comes from mobile phones. Phone users will have difficulty reading text and interacting with the content on smaller screens, leading to frustration and lowering engagement.
To effectively design a responsive website, consider a flexible layout or test your site on multiple devices and browsers.
Complicated navigation is one of the common web design mistakes to avoid. It appears unprofessional with menu items or navigation components that are not easily accessible to users. This includes a lack of organized menus, confusing hierarchy, or unclear labels, driving more users off the page.
To avoid cluttered navigation, make sure your website has a prominent navigation menu that displays all of the categories. You can use white space to create visual separation or limit the menu to a few key items between 5 and 7.
Poor website accessibility may involve insufficient color contrast, missing alternative text for images, and autoplaying media without user control. It decreases the website’s usability, and people will see your page as broken and crumbling into bits. Plus, it also seems harder for people with disabilities to engage with the website.
Follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make the website more inclusive to everyone by implementing harmonious color contrast, clear language, and proper HTML.
Many websites struggle with bad typography, leading to unclear information, especially on small screens. This can manifest in several ways, including the use of difficult-to-read fonts, clashing contrast between text and background, improper line spacing, and inconsistent alignment.
To fix bad typography matters, limit the font style and ensure consistent spacing and alignment within a page to create a cohesive and organized look.
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A bad website fails to guide the user from the headline to the next logical step due to the disorganized content structure. Sometimes, all elements appear equally important, so the user doesn’t know where to focus their attention. You can organize elements based on common reading patterns or prioritize the important ones higher up on the page.
Text-heavy pages make the content feel dense, illegible, and unattractive. This kind of web design mistake can reduce scannability and increase the likelihood of users abandoning the page. So, how to fix large blocks of text? You should prioritize concise messaging by breaking up text into bullet points or subheadings.
Also Read: 15 Principles of Effective Web Design to Boost Engagement
CTAs should be clear to encourage user action, and that’s not what bad websites do. It often features vague language and poor CTA placement. This ultimately reduces the website’s efficacy in driving desired action and meeting its objectives.
Consider using a specific and actionable CTA to increase the likelihood of conversion. Also, make it visually distinct and place it on the landing or home page.
This website design mistake often features poor lighting, a lack of editing, and inconsistent visual styles that contribute to pixelated or blurry visuals on certain devices. As a result, a website can appear cheap and untrustworthy. As the solution, select the proper file format and apply compression techniques to reduce file size without sacrificing significant quality.
Lastly, a bad website may encounter errors due to broken links and incorrect URLs, or a page being moved without proper redirection. To fix this common mistake, create a custom 404 page to guide users back to the relevant content instead of letting them leave the site.
Also Read: Graphic Design Portfolio Websites 2025: Elevate Your Creative Showcase
There’s no perfect website. However, knowing the common website issues above will help you create a visually appealing site while focusing on high usability to meet user-centered design principles.When designing a website, invest in your typography with an exclusive font collection from Salamah Type. You can avoid font design mistakes with stunning characters, multilingual support, and versatile licenses for lifetime usage at affordable rates.
