There is a myriad of ways of building a website. With so many options to choose from, it is not a strenuous task to develop a website. Just pick the ideal platform you are comfortable with and then grasping all the nuts and bolts of it, your site is up and running.
With time, web development has evolved from static HTML pages to dynamic and complex applications. Developing a site is now a less daunting task but making it usable is. With thousands of digital and printed resources available that provide the complete procedure of how to develop a website for all different web application but nonetheless, speak nothing when it comes to avoiding certain steps. If you are an experienced player in this domain, then you might be familiar with all the mistakes you made initially and all the difficulties you had to battle with regularly. There are even different platforms that easily turn simple static HTML pages into highly interactive applications and even if you do not want to go in depth, simply hire a web development company that does the job for you or have the option of hiring a freelancer.
Although irrespective of the choice you make, all the practices, patterns, platforms share some common points and are prone to certain web development issues. Therefore, it is advisable if you could avoid making those mistakes at the very first place. But the question is what those mistakes are?
Through this article, I have touched on five general mistakes that are commonly made by web developers. With that being said, let us have a look at it.
Disabling the back button:
Disabling the back button surely makes users fretting over why they would even come to the page at the very first place. The absence of a back button makes users switch to another site as when a user pushes it, they are redirected to an unwanted location as a new pop-up window appears overtaking the screen. Therefore, it is advisable to never let it happen to your site and not to check for the back button.
Broken Links:
How often have you been greeted by “404” error page whenever you visit a site? What do you do at that time? Simply, switch to another site, right? That is what users do. Broken links that lead to “404” errors pages are detrimental to your site. What is the final nail in the coffin is that you do not even know that your site has broken links and thinks that it is optimised? Therefore, test your site from time to time to ensure that there are no broken hyperlinks and if there is any, fix those errors immediately.
Lack of Search Box:
Whether your site is an e-commerce one or a simple information portal or merely a personal blog, if they cannot find what they are looking for, then might leave without any second thought. People need search box to search for the related and pertinent information. With a visible search box, visitors will get what they want and also enable them to search your site in an efficient manner. All you need to do is copy HTML code from the control panel and paste it into your website to set search function on your website.
Inconsistent Interface Design:
Inconsistency and excesses of anything can cost you much. Though it is good to be creative, in order to do that, developers sometimes, end up incorporating lots of things on the site and end up slowing down and cluttering the site. This can lead to frustration for users and would a bad user experience resulting in less conversion rate. No matter how enchanting and outstanding your site is, if the overall look and design are not consistent, users will leave as soon as they visit it.
Here are some suggestions to avoid that.
- Use a standard consistent template for every page and link it to the main sections of the site.
- The keyword is simple. Create simple designs and users will never get annoyed.
Unorganised Content Layout:
A website is an archive of information and resources and if your site contains some useful information, then users might be willing to come back again and again. A site’s content is what drives traffic. The site’s success depends on how well structured and organised the content is. Users do not like to read everything and just skim through information and pick out points that interest them. Sometimes developers just put a text totally neglecting titles and headlines, bullets, sub-headings and keywords.
Let us suppose you want a useful information and instead are thrown upon with large paragraphs of simple texts only to make it kind of boring. The same emotions evoke for users if they find it difficulty in finding the suitable information. Use an appropriate page title for each web page so that users know exactly where they are and where they are heading to. Do not forget to mention your page’s name.
Here are some suggestions to avoid that:
- Organise content on your website using CSS and HTML.
- Use whitespace between your text and images to making your site clutter free.
- Update and be consistent. The purpose of updating is not just to add new content but to spot and correct past mistakes.
You are good to go:
The bottom line is to try to keep your site as simple as possible yet creative enough to grab user attention. Excessive usage of anything or minimal usage will do more harm than good. Strike a balance and your site is usable. Therefore, simplicity should be a key goal while designing and avoiding unnecessary complexity.
Have thoughts or queries? Feel free to drop by in the comments section below.
