First impressions are crucial for telling your brand’s story and engaging your audience, but even the smallest web design errors can potentially undermine your credibility. Understanding the main pitfalls in web design is essential to building an intuitive website that enhances the user experience, uplifts your brand message, and creates trust with your customer base.
In this article, we’ll explore the top mistakes in web design that can lessen your brand impact and how you can fix or avoid them to improve user engagement and boost your search rankings.
What is Considered a Bad Website Design?
For a website’s design to be considered bad, it must do the following:
- Fails to meet visitor’s expectations
- Be difficult or confusing to navigate through
- Explains the product or service poorly
- Has a lack of or unconvincing calls to action
- Presents a negative user experience
- Lacks mobile-friendliness
- Inconsistent branding
- Have broken internal links and 404 errors
- Include excessive pop-ups or ads
- Have a confusing, cluttered layout
- Unreadable fonts or poor typography
- Auto-playing media
Did you know that 94% of negative first impressions are caused by inadequate web design? Overloading your website with information is one major contributor to this issue. A cluttered, text-heavy web page filled with technical jargon can quickly overwhelm users, distracting them from your brand’s message in the process.
Always remember that “less is more” when it comes to website design. Include concise yet informative paragraphs with simplified terms to create a more engaging and positive user experience, ensuring that you retain visitors and strengthen your brand’s impact.
Common Design Mistakes That Can Negatively Impact a Website
Here are 10 of the most common web design errors and how you can avoid making them:
Not Prioritising Accessibility
Forgetting about accessibility is the worst web design mistake you could make. If your website is not accessible to visitors, it will result in greater bounce rates.
Our Advice: Here are some important accessibility features to consider when designing your site:
Colour contrast
Use contrasting colour combinations to ensure a clear delineation between the foreground and background. The strong colour contrast makes it easier for visitors (especially those with colour blindness) to perceive your site’s texts, images, and icons.
Include alt text
Site visitors who use screen readers normally rely on image alt texts to understand what an image or graphic is trying to convey. If the alt text is missing or insufficient, it may isolate visitors from your site’s brand story.
Include visual focus indicators
Visual focus indicators are simple outlines around interactive components like links and buttons. These ensure that visitors know what the page’s current focus is, letting them see exactly where they are on the page and what to expect when they interact with the active element.
Include accessible names and labels
Using simple texts or labels such as ‘Read More’ can help guide visitors to buttons and other active elements. For screen readers, use longer and more descriptive labels like ‘Read More BikeBear.’
Slow Loading Speed
Loading speed refers to the duration it takes for the site to load fully. The ideal loading time should be under two seconds. Any higher will result in visitors waiting longer than they desire, increasing the chance of them leaving the site before it fully loads.
Our advice: Unoptimised images and videos are one of the primary causes of slow loading speeds. Thus, you should focus on compressing any media on your site. Compression will optimise images or videos without compromising on quality. Additionally, you should reduce the number of heavy scripts and flash content that can slow down page rendering.
Forgetting about Responsive Web Design
Most people today use their mobile devices to research pretty much everything. If your website is not optimised for mobile devices, it will have elements such as images and navigation that maintain their absolute size and position regardless of the screen size. This can lead to a poor user experience, as visitors will have to spend time zooming in and out or scrolling horizontally to get the full information.
Our advice: Keep responsive web design at the forefront of your web design. Include elements that automatically readjust to any screen size, ensuring that your website is always easy to read, navigate, and understand on every device.
An example from BikeBear: BikeBaju leverages Shopify apps to create a responsive web design that enables mobile device users to quickly and easily access a functional online store that perfectly fits on their device’s screen.
Unconvincing Calls to Action (CTA)
A CTA is a prompt that encourages visitors to perform a certain course of action. This can include labels such as “Contact us now” or “Click Here to Subscribe.” A lack of clear CTAs can lead to vague messages such as “Learn more” or “Read more.” This can lead to confusion and lost conversions as visitors will likely not click on any link they aren’t sure of.
Our advice: Set clear and actionable CTAs that instantly answer your visitors' thoughts and questions. Communicate the intent behind each button or link they’re about to click on. Actionable CTAs can also guide visitors to conversion points such as a newsletter, shopping cart, or contact form. For example, display a “Shop Now” to encourage users to start shopping for your brand’s products.
An example from BikeBear: When designing the website for Sugi, we created a Shop & Win campaign to incentivise and encourage footfall. This is rounded off with an official landing page for the new venture, linking it with its official pharmacy partners for e-commerce functionality.
Poor Navigation
Website navigation is a key element of any website. If navigation elements such as a bar or menu are immediately visible or easily accessible, visitors will be confused as to where to go next and frustrated at not knowing where to find the information they want.
Our advice: Ensure that all navigation elements are clearly displayed and easy to access. One method of doing so is through a sticky menu. This simple element provides consistent access to a navigation menu no matter how far you’ve scrolled down the page.
Lack of a Hierarchy
A website hierarchy determines the reading order or focus that visitors should follow. A cohesive hierarchy guides visitors through your brand story and drives them to complete clear actions. By contrast, a lack of a clear hierarchy will leave visitors unsure of where to go next or confused about the nature of your brand.
Our advice: A website hierarchy should be both aesthetic and functional. For example, you can use different typography to differentiate headlines and subheadings, improving readability and guiding visitors toward an actionable point.
Cluttered Interface
Too many cooks can spoil the broth. Cluttering a page with text, graphics, or media can leave it disorganised, visually overwhelming, and just plain perplexing. Having too much content on a single web page makes it difficult for visitors to focus on or find what’s important, causing them to leave out of frustration and confusion.
Our advice: Less is more. Use white space to create a cleaner, more organised layout. White space not only breaks up content and helps the eyes rest, but it also makes it easier to focus on key elements such as brand information and CTA buttons.
Unreadable Text
The readability and legibility of your website’s text are vital to conveying your brand’s story and values. Unreadable text is caused by the excessive use of different font styles and sizes, unreadable typography choices, and random choice of colour scheme on web page elements. These design flaws make it difficult for visitors to read important content, such as product information, resulting in a poor user experience and higher bounce rates.
Our advice: Use consistent font styles and sizes that aren’t too big or too small and hard to read without zooming in. The ideal font sizes should be around 16 pt/px on a mobile screen, 15-19 pt/px on a tablet, and 16-20 pt/px on a desktop. Only use different typography to differentiate the text from headlines and subheadings, creating a clear reading hierarchy. Finally, ensure that your text’s colour stands out from the background, improving colour contrast and readability.
Generic Design
Visual appeal is an effective means of attracting attention. If your website fails to stand out from the rest, visitors will likely pass it over in favour of something more aesthetically pleasing. As such, your website must have a unique design that conveys your branding and makes it easier for visitors to instantly recognise your brand as distinct from the rest.
Our advice: Utilise colour palettes that are visually appealing while also being easy to recognise as unique to your branding. Avoid overusing stock imagery; if possible, include custom, in-house photography to better highlight your product in an aesthetic manner.
An example from BikeBear: ATE’s website uses a playful and lively design to reflect the creative agency’s young-spirited brand. We incorporated many vibrant animations and elements that help the website stand out from typical ones. When users hover over any buttons, they can find little fun surprises that encourage them to learn more about the innovative brand.
Vague Messaging
Vague messaging refers to your site's failure to convey your unique value proposition. This kind of messaging can leave customers confused about what your brand does and offers. Without a clear understanding of your brand’s value, potential customers may leave for your competitors.
Our advice: Display clear and informative messaging—preferably at the top or centre of the landing page—to immediately communicate your brand's identity, offerings, and differentiation from the competition. Doing so builds trust and encourages visitors to continue exploring your site, which increases engagement and leads to conversions.
How Do I Fix a Bad Website Design?
First and foremost, review the mistakes made and list them. Here are a few basic tips for fixing a bad website design:
- Fix your fonts, making them readable and legible.
- Use graphics well; don’t clutter your website with them.
- Less is more; make good use of white space to make the most important parts of your site stand out.
- Balance your page. When users enter the site, they will generally focus first on the top left of the page before slowly moving towards the bottom right.
- Revisit your Site Map and improve your navigation, ensuring that the menu or bar is in the expected location.
- Get a professional website designer to redesign your site, fix any mistakes, and train your staff on how to maintain a competent website.
Conclusion
Now that you are familiar with the key mistakes in web page design, you will have an easier time avoiding them. Applying this knowledge will help you create a functional website that conveys an engaging brand story. First impressions matter, after all; a well-designed website is one where visitors will want to explore and learn, and the more visitors learn about your product or service, the more likely they are to convert, and the farther your brand’s impact will spread.
Design an Effective Website with Help from BikeBear
BikeBear’s team of web design experts in Malaysia will help you create an effective website that tells your brand story compellingly, guaranteeing more conversions and higher search rankings.
