Bad website designs to stay away from

Websites are the home base for your brand – so they have to be effective and appealing for your audience. Wait – come back! You shouldn’t rush out and spend thousands of pounds on a website right now – you don’t need a professional website – just make sure it’s fit for purpose. However, you also have to have a website that’s at least better than this one.

There is a lot of planning behind a good website, so read this article for a checklist of things to consider before you make your own. As it can be a costly and time-consuming process, you should make sure you have an idea of what you’re looking for before jumping right in; save this list to come back to!

Poor graphic design

• Clashing colours are overwhelming for a website visitor, and should be avoided except in specific scenarios.
• You need to make sure you have the correct balance of white space on your page; too much, and it looks bare bones – but too little, and you’re the curator of clutter!
• Don’t use too many words when you can use a diagram or even a video to convey the same information.
• Match your fonts and colours for a more cohesive look to your site.
• Kerning is the space between letters so make sure this is equal in long passages of text – otherwise readability goes out of the window!
• Make any website text effective and readable – consider hiring a copywriter or proofreader.
• Align elements properly to make the site more visually appealing.
• Don’t use pixelated images – make them clean and high-quality (strike a balance between size and load speed).
• Design for the medium and optimise your site – for example, depending if it’s on a browser or mobile, you might make different choices.

Accessibility

• Make your content hierarchy relevant and efficient, as well as easy to use for a website visitor.
• Too many ads cluttering up the page can also affect your website’s accessibility – people will just up and leave. Have a few if you need to, but don’t let them fill half the page – or more!
• Ensure any visitor to your website can get access to your content; add alt text on images for screen readers, for example.

User experience

• Keyword stuffing is including excessive amounts of keywords without context for the sake of SEO, but this practice is classed as spam according to Google – as well as appearing unprofessional to a visitor.
• If you’re not encouraging visitors to make a purchase, join your mailing list or anything else with a call-to-action, you’re not effectively using your website!

Fit for purpose

• Does your website accomplish what it needs to? Make sure your website is geared towards advertising your product if you want to make sales, or send your audience to your social media to build up an audience.
• If you’re not including your contact information on your website, nobody’s going to be able to get in touch with you!
• Make sure your website is safe and secure, for both you and your site visitors; get a SSL certificate to authenticate your website’s authenticity.
• You need a privacy policy – this tells your audience what you’re doing with their data, meaning your business practices can be transparent.

Completed it, mate

Whew! Keep this checklist handy for when you’re making a website or doing some serious rebranding – each point is a guide on how to craft the most effective and appealing website. If you enjoyed reading this, you should check out our blog on the best WordPress plugins; this will be your next step to making your website!