3 common mistakes in web design

I’ve come across 3 types of approaches that invariably lead to bad results - the “what were they thinking?” type of results :

1) Website-as-Art Syndrome

It’s easy to identify. The website concentrates so much on making everything look “pretty” or “cool” that the key elements are left out. A good example is the Dolce Gabbana kids collection site - there is one Flash developer proud of his work somewhere, and many many frustrated users everywhere!

Having a pretty or cool website may have been in good idea in the 90s, where people were just curious and looking for the few cool websites around.

That was about 10 years ago. Now you can get beautiful templates for free, so pretty websites are everywhere. Competing for attention on the basis of aesthetics or coolness is a wasteful endeavor. The focus should be on making 3 things clear to the visitor:

- what she can find here

- how she can find it fast

- why she should care about you

2) Too Many Focuses (is No Focus)

We want our visitor to buy so let’s make the buy button bigger, and she also needs to see who we are so let’s make our statement bigger. And more colorful . And bolder. And all at once

When we focus on too many things at once the result may look disastrous (ex Template Monster website)

Look at this website here: http://www.google.com/ and you’ll know why a single focus makes things much easier

3) Small Improvements That Make a Large Catastrophe

A common tendency when reviewing the design of a website is to come up with small improvements like ” make it rounder, make it darker, put it higher, change the picture, change the color”

It’s a recipe for disaster. The problem is not only a frustrated designer (if you pay him by the hour he may not mind at all), it’s the overall design balance. Change a detail here and a detail there, and the holistic view is lost.
You end up with nice-looking pieces taken separately but that don’t work together.

So next time, choose a different design, or even a different designer, but not a different shade of blue on that 3rd button!