The 5 most deadly mistakes in web design

The subject of web design is often one that can be a little bit tricky, since different people have various opinions about what constitutes a good web design and what doesn’t. Whilst some people think that your site must be super sleek with a modern and up to date design in order to get attention, others believe that web design is overrated, and it’s better to have a site that simply works well and allows people to do what they want. Depending on the industry or business, neither of these ideas is wrong. But, how do you figure out what is right for your site? 

Too small fonts

A common mistake that many people make is creating a website with fonts that are too small. The reason for this is that back in the day most websites had standard fonts of around 12px. However, over time people realised that 12px could be pretty difficult to read online, and with a limited amount of time to get people’s attention, this could cause issues. 15-20px is an ideal size for fonts in the site body, and you should go even bigger for headers.

Low contrast fonts

Another common mistake regarding fonts is that people go for font colours which don’t contrast well with the background. You want to make your website content as easy to read as possible, which is why it’s important to pick a font colour which stands out from the background.

Not using accent colours

When it comes to the calls for action buttons on your site, you’ll want them to be easy to notice so that users don’t have to spend time figuring out which buttons to click, which could put them off staying on your site. For example, if you have a ‘Buy Now’ button, it’s a good idea to highlight it in an accent colour such as yellow which will grab the user’s attention straight away.

Violations of common design principles

Although you may think that not following trends will make your website stand out more, you don’t want to deviate so far away that your site begins to stand out for all the wrong reasons. Users are used to finding common design features in similar places, such as logos and taglines in the top left of a page and menus at the right. It is a good idea to include these features on your site and think twice about breaking common design principles.

Line length too long

Another mistake that you can make is creating lines of text that are too long. Long lines of text can be rather intimidating to read online, and many people may not begin reading if the line length is too long since it doesn’t look like a very good reading experience. Since screen sizes vary a lot it’s important to set a maximum width for content, which the best web hosting services allow you to do easily.

If you’d like to mention any further deadly web design mistakes, let us know in the comments!