Design Mistakes That Can Ruin your Website

See some big design mistakes that can ruin your website idea, style, and even your business representation and how to avoid & best practices.

By Claudio Pires
Updated on October 7, 2022
Design Mistakes That Can Ruin your Website

See now some big design mistakes that can ruin your website idea, style, and even your business representation. The website is the virtual representation of your business and the main hub that generates conversions. However, the real challenge is not in building a website but ratherin  making it usable in the best possible way.

Even the most experienced web designers commit mistakes when it comes to website design. There are numerous mistakes, from unattractive home pages to the poor navigation system, irrelevant content to terribly slow server times. To improve the performance of your website, here is a list of the 10 most disastrous website mistakes that often web designers commit.

Design Mistakes That Can Ruin your Website

1. Poor navigation: Website design mistakes

A good website design is not only about looking and feeling. Rather, it’s about usability. Navigation has a bigger impact on the success or failure of a website design than any other factor. Good navigation makes it easy for users to find whatever they are looking for in other words, they can swiftly visit the website pages without any distraction. On the other hand, if your navigation bar is poorly created, then it will give you a hard time for users. The navigation bar on your site should aim to guide visitors to other areas of your site seamlessly. Here are some suggestions:

  • Firstly, use textual descriptions and alt text for images to ensure easy navigation.
  • Secondly, ensure your navigation complements your website’s theme and aligns with your overall branding.
  • Finally, let your website navigation be descriptive to ensure it communicates conveniently with users without confusion.

Best Practice: Position the navigation bar either at the top of the page or along the left side to ensure visibility to the users regardless of screen resolution. You may also add an easy-to-find sitemap in your main navigation bar so visitors can have an at-a-glance view of every page on your site.

2. Using irrelevant images:

Images add a visual appeal to the website and are perfect for capturing users’ attention. However, be careful with the pictures you use. Using irrelevant or low-resolution photos is not a good idea. Images you upload on your website need to be relevant to the information or content on your site, checked for quality and clarity, and not to miss usefulness. Images are good but adding too many images can distract users and slower the website loading speed, thus affecting the performance of your website.

Best Practice: If your site is up with too many images or a full-page animation, giving users an option of a skip button is a great idea.

3. Bad Logo Design:

The logo is crucial for every business or company and, needless to say, is an integral part of branding. So, ensure your logo is appropriately present on your website. While designing your business logo, keep your target audience in mind and pick a color that goes with your hidden messages in logos or, in other words, branding messages. A bad logo design interferes with your website design and negatively affects your branding.

Best Practice: The standard logo placement convention is in the page’s top left area. Placing your logo where the users expect it to find is a good practice and also ensures a user-friendly experience.

4. Outdated Information: Website Design Mistakes

A well-designed site with dated or irrelevant content is no less than a blunder. To keep your website’s credibility and rank better in search engine results, you must constantly add fresh and informative content to your site. It can be in blogs, the latest news, company events, product launch, if any, etc. For instance- if you are a veterinary physician, your blogs can cover topics about pets, such as dog ear infections, allergies in dogs, etc. Also, ensure all content on your site is free of spelling or grammatical errors and is of value to the users. Make it a priority to have content updates on your site, if not daily, at least monthly.

Best Practice: When drafting content for your website, use an appropriate page title for each web page. Often designers forget to name a page. They just put a block of text on the web page, neglecting headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, bullets, etc. A proper page title is essential for users to know where they are.

Design Mistakes That Can Ruin your Website
Design Mistakes That Can Ruin your Website

5. Non-responsive website design:

A survey by Freshsparks reveals that 40% of users have gone to a competitor’s website after a poor mobile experience. We live in a digital age where people are constantly connected with their handheld devices such as mobile phones, Ipads, tablets, etc. To give your users a mobile-friendly experience, having a responsive website design is the need of the hour. No matter how good your website design is, users will be discouraged and leave your site if it is not responsive. So, if you haven’t already started transitioning to responsive, get on it before your consumers decide that it’s way too much effort to view what your website has to offer.

Best Practice: If you don’t want a responsive web design or mobile site, consider having an app for mobile users to give them a mobile-friendly experience.

6. Too many font styles and colors: Design mistakes that ruin a website

Your website pages should have a consistent and unified look. This can be achieved using similar font styles and one or two colors dominating the web page, at maximum. The idea here is to assure viewers of your solidity and stability. Most users spend a few seconds on your web page, and at the same time, they decide whether to continue surfing or leave. When picking fonts, go with the one that is readable and professional-looking.

Best Practice: Standard practice is to keep the font size either 12 or 14.

7. No social media experience:

Social media has become integral to every business’s marketing strategy. Almost all companies maintain their own Facebook Page, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. It is considered a website mistake if you do not add social media buttons on your website. So, the best practice for new websites is, that users should have the option to move from one platform to the other swiftly without any distraction. Therefore, let your visitors connect with your social media pages and know your products and services in detail.

Best Practice: Best practice for website design is to add sharing buttons on top of your site, making it easier for users to look for your social media experience.

8. Unable to place a call to action button at the correct place:

Your CTA buttons must be such that users can’t help but click. The very purpose of the call to action button fails if they are not visible or placed at the appropriate location. Make sure you put your CTA button above or below the fold on the web page. These two places are of paramount importance when it comes to the efficacy of the buttons. So, ensure you place your CTA buttons correctly to increase your conversion rates.

Best Practice: When fixing CTA buttons on your website, consider other elements such as background color, surrounding images, and text.

A broken or dead link is a link on a web page that no longer exists or works. It generally happens in two cases: 1) the website owner has entered an improper URL for the link 2) The destination website removed the linked web page resulting in a 404 error. Broken links interfere with your website design and harm your website functionality. It negatively affects user experience by redirecting them to error pages and damaging your search engine rankings. Test your site regularly to ensure all links are working correctly and ensure your website page contains all relevant links.

Best Practice: Add a ‘contact the webmaster’ link in your site’s footer so that if a user finds any broken link can be quickly fixed.

Broken Links or Dead Links
Design Mistakes That Can Ruin your Website

10. Not including contact no.:

Lastly, another common website design mistakes are not including contact no., address details, and email address on your website. This information is so critical that the link should be added to every page of your website. Viewers should be given enough flexibility in how they want to contact you. The very presence of this information adds credibility to your site, comforts the visitors, and ensures that visitors can get in touch with you easily.

Best Practice: Make sure ‘Contact us’ is a part of your main navigation instead of making it a part of the second navigation, as in the footer or toolbar.

Make sure the design mistakes are not hurting your website’s overall engagement. Follow these pointers and maintain a clean and error-free website.

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.