{ Web Design Mistakes to Avoid }

A website is the first thing a visitor sees, it should be clean, easily navigated  and readable website will keep visitors come back for more. Unfortunately their are some things to avoid when designing a website and here are what they are.

• Unclear Content - nothing is more confusing to a web visitor then when the site is hard to understand what the content is. You should be able to understand the site's purpose within seconds of arriving on the site. If the homepage is misleading or confusing the visitor may not find what they came to your site for. Clean, simple text on the homepage in a visible, central area will tell the visitors what they need to know and how to use the site

• Advertising-  ads irritate visitors, and they make your site look alot less professional. Depending on who you use for the ads, competitor ads might be placed on your site. The extra cash isn't worth losing a customer.

• Complicated Graphics- it might be tempting to have flashing animation or a bunch of cute gifs on your page, but try to avoid them. Cluttered design can take away from the content on your site and it can even annoy visitors. The cleaner the website the easier for the visitor to understand the sites purpose. Plus if the site has to much on it, it could take some time to load and may not even work on some platforms.

• Unreadable Text - avoid fancy fonts. lots of bolding and underlining, and bad color choices. A traditional font in a dark color on a light background may seem simple, but it works because it's readable. Always avoid using too small or too large or text that changes sizes often or too severely. 

• Spelling and Grammar Errors- you should always proofread everything posted onto your site, That means no spelling, grammatical, or punctuation errors. Simple errors can make you look very unprofessional. Always proofread and double check.

• Pop Ups -  are annoying, unnecessary and force visitors to juggle multiple windows and pages rather than simply hitting the back button to return to where they were. Many people keep the pop blocker feature turned on in their browsers, which means they either have to approve each pop up a site throws at them, or they miss content. Plus, we tend to associate advertisements and dangerous spam with pop ups. Avoid using them at all costs. 

• Irrelevant Content - producing new content is important for SEO and to drive traffic, but make sire your content is always relevant to your site. Otherwise the purpose of your website will become less clear and you may lose traffic, or attract people who aren't interested in your site's actual purpose. 

• Complicated Navigation- whether it's menus within menus, drop down menus or absolutely no menus at all, avoid making your visitors work to find the content they're looking for. Navigating your site should be easy and intuitive. You need a single, simple menu with all navigation options obvious. Similarly, don't shove everything onto the homepage and forego navigation all together, Huge blocks of text and long pages that aren't scalable will send site visitors running to hit the back button 

Steering clear of these web design mistakes will create a clean, user friendly experience for your websites visitors. Making the content obvious, readable and accessible gives visitors an incentive to return. Plus they'll focus on the purpose of your website ans not on any design flaws.