Bad website design abound all over the internet.
According to Forbes, there are 1.13 billion websites in the world as of February 2023. And only 200 million are active.
Yet, there are millions of websites with bad user experience worldwide.
Considering the fact that a negative user experience will discourage traffic and chase your potential clients, you need to pay attention to your website design.
Is your website design top notch? And how can you tell if it truly is?
This is the essence of this article. Let’s begin with knowing what a bad design is.
What Is Bad Design?
To properly understand what a bad design is, let’s know what a good design is.
A good design is one that visually appeals and attracts. With an effective composition of color, and typography, a good design gives a cohesive result.
On the other hand, a bad design is visually unappealing, cluttered and unbalanced. When you see a bad design, it’s difficult to capture important information. It lacks alignment.
Note that we’ve only talked about bad design.
Now, when it comes to a bad website design, how do we identify one. Let’s dive slowly into this topic.
How To Know A Bad Website Design
Hubspot states 5 reasons a website design could be considered bad. See them below:
- Cluttered Layout
- Hidden Navigation Menu
- Lack of Color Contrast
- Non-responsive Design
- Inconsistent Typefaces
Now, let’s thoroughly consider 5 errors to spot in a bad website design.
5 Errors To Spot In Bad Website Designs
1. Lack of Clarity and Purpose
A fundamental characteristics of a good website is a clear, precise and definite message. Without a purpose and clear reason for the website, the website has no solid foundation and as a result, would fail to appeal to visitors.
Consequently, users’ expectation would be dashed. Since the website content does not present a coherent message, each visitor will leave confused rather than take any desired action.
To avoid such errors, website owners must consciously communicate the purpose to the digital marketing agency responsible to prepare the website. Where the website owner has a personal writer, such must write according to the content brief the website owner provides.
When this is done, it’s easier for visitors to understand and interact with the website.
2. Cluttered Pages
A cluttered page has too many elements in it. As a result, it becomes difficult for users to navigate and discover information they search.
Such websites have information overload. In addition, they’re have more than enough visuals and adverts. This frustrate users, distracting them from the core content the website projects.
It’s therefore vital for businesses to simplify designs, clear unnecessary elements and structure content in an orderly fashion.
When this is done, user experience will be enhanced and the purpose of the website is much more planted in the heart of every visitor.
3. Lack of Mobile Friendliness
A lot of people access information using their smartphones. Hence, when creating a website, optimize it for mobile experience. Websites that are not optimized for mobile experience may have one or more of the following issues when you search and explore them on smartphones:
- Layout Issues
- Distorted Images
- Difficulty In Interacting With Touch Screens
For a positive user experience, businesses and individuals must optimize their websites for smartphone users.
Since active internet users are more on mobile rather than on laptops or other larger screen devices, optimizing websites for mobile use is therefore paramount to getting the results you desire from your website.
All in all, optimizing websites across every device is vital to ensuring that businesses cater to larger audiences, thus giving them a wider reach and greater chances of success.
4. Complex Navigation and Insufficient Links
A website that delivers and serves the purpose intended will be easy to navigate.
It takes less than 10 seconds for you to make a good first impression with a visual. How much more when a website is not easy to navigate? You easily put people off because they don’t want you to waste their time.
Hence, it is vital to create websites with a mind that users are willing to move from page to page and take advantage of what’s available on your website.
Therefore, websites – both company and individual – should work at providing sufficient links and help people navigate across their website pages. Pages should be categorized and divided into subcategories, providing sufficient links to each one of them.
When businesses provide sufficient links and ease the navigation process, users will be helped to easily access the information they seek.
5. Unreadable text and un-clickable buttons
Some websites have readability issues. Poor fonts, small sized, and bad formatting on the website. All of these will have a negative effect on the experience users get.
Also, there are some websites that have pages with obvious indications of buttons that should lead to other pages when clicked. However, they’re not functional. This immediately discourages the visitor as it hinders smooth interaction.
In this situation described above, texts are not legible, and buttons are not clickable.
This should be addressed by ensuring that website designers you hire, use clear fonts and test the effectiveness of their work on various devices to ensure all features are functioning properly.
Texts should be clear, readable and well formatted. Buttons should be designed to be clickable, thus providing clear and organized visuals aiding responsiveness.
In conclusion, identifying a bad website design will help business owners and individuals to bear all shortcomings in mind. They will have a cue as to the best description they could give to the website designer to handle their website design.
On the other hand, it’s likely that a good website designer already has this information about bad website designs.
However, this article will yet prove useful for reminders, an addition or an elaborate understanding of what a web designer already knows. A good website design will increase visitors, keep them and increase conversion rate.
Finally, you may need a digital marketing agency that will build you a modern website, or resolve your website design issues.
Contact Mary, the founder of MAO Digital Solution. She breathes exceptional brilliance with her website design skills. Read the proof on Linkedin.
