Could your website be turning away potential customers or clients for your business? Some features may seem like a good way to get your visitors’ attention, but in truth it might not always be the sort of attention you want. The following is a list of some of the top web design to features to avoid, and what you can use instead as a design-friendly alternative.
- “Auto play” Video and Audio Clips
Few things are more startling than when your computer or smart phone starts talking to you out of nowhere. Video and audio clips set to automatically play when someone loads a page are designed to alert site visitors to a certain message, but unfortunately that message is seldom heard while people are frantically searching for a way to disable the unwanted sound. What’s the quickest way to do this? Leaving your website and never coming back.
Replace with: Disable auto-play for anything that makes noise. Video and audio clips can be a great addition to your company’s website, but give your visitors the option to experience them on their own terms. 
Pop Ups
Whether they’re paid advertisements or you’re hoping to announce a special promotion or event for your business, a pop up ad that gets in the way of your webpage is never welcome.
Replace with: Use newsletters, social media posts, or forms instead of pop ups. If you have a special announcement or want to get a message to as many people as possible, consider starting a newsletter or announcing your message on social media pages. If you really want a pop-up message on your web pages, keep it on the edge of the page so that it doesn’t obstruct your content, and make sure site visitors have an easy way to get rid of it if they want to.- Required Registration
Getting people to make an account or sign up for a newsletter can be a great way to connect with your customers and help your business grow, but if you’re holding your website’s content hostage behind a registration form, you’ll be doing far more harm than good.
Replace with: Offer additional content in exchange for registration, but leave the basics open to everyone. Give site visitors a taste of what you have to offer and show them why they should want to fill out that registration form. - Unbalanced Color Schemes and Illegible Fonts
There are thousands of interesting and fun fonts out there, and while they may look nice, not everyone can read them. Colors that are too bright and harsh or too faded can mean that your content is getting lost. Website viewers may move on to a different site if they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, and trying to get past a difficult color scheme or font choice takes up precious time.
Replace With: Make your content, meaning your text and images, the star of your website. Use colors and fonts that are easy to look at and won’t serve as a distraction. Limit fancy fonts to titles and headers, and use a plain, easy to read font for your main bodies of text. - Text and Graphics from Another Site
Maybe while searching for ideas for your website and browsing the sites of your competitors you saw an image or paragraph that perfectly reflects your own company, but copying content directly from another website is never a good idea. In addition to being plagiarism, using content that has already been published elsewhere will affect how a search engine sees your website, resulting in a loss of traffic from web searches.
Replace with: Make sure all of your content is original. If you don’t want to make your own, consider hiring a graphic designer or copywriter to create unique content tailored to your specific goals and ideas. They’ll work with you to develop content that is professional, SEO friendly, and reflects your business. - Cluttered pages
You have a lot to say about your company, and that’s great. If you try to say it all at once, however, the majority of your message could become lost. Avoid creating pages that contain huge walls of text and cluttered graphics that are difficult to read.
Replace with: Your web designer can help you break down your content into separate pages and sections that are easy to navigate and therefore more likely to be viewed by site visitors. Use shorter paragraphs and break up large blocks of text using graphics. Be sure to pay attention to the white space, meaning the space between each section of text or image, and make sure it is balanced and makes your web pages easy on the eyes.
Click here to learn more about why your website might be driving away traffic. Hiring a professional web designer is the best way to ensure that your website is professional and effective at telling your company’s story, and that doesn’t have a design that might drive your business to the web pages of your competitors. Contact Design Interventions today and become one of our success stories.
