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What To Avoid When Designing A Website

Josh Cox Josh Cox 21 March 2020 2 min read
A spider's web

Over the years we’ve been designing websites, we’d like to think we’ve learnt a thing a two.

Here are our top 5 elements to avoid if you take designing a website into your own hands.

(1) Non-responsive design

If you’re website doesn’t work (and work well) on a phone or tablet, you’re selling your self short of roughly 60% of the traffic that will visit to your site.

Mobile responsiveness should be one of the top priorities in designing a website. It’s extremely crucial in user experience, search engine rankings, and just the general look on a tablet and mobile.

(2) Tonnes of text

And especially on the home page. As technology develops there seems to be a correlation with the decrease in attention spans.

Keep any text (where possible) straight to the point and use short sentences. They work.

(3) Poor quality images

Poor quality images on your website portrays you and your business as poor quality. Visitors will make a link between the artwork on your website and the service/product you offer.

If you don’t want to or can’t use a professional photographer, look for stock images. There are plenty of sites out there that offer free, licence-free images. Try Pexels or Pixabay.

(4) ‘Boxed’ designs

They can look nice at times and when done well, but this is 2018, we’re growing out of them.

Full-width design is common place these days. Make sure you incorporate it.

By using full-width design you’re making use of the whole screen, compared to two thirds, or three quarters of it.

(5) Going overboard

There’s a famous acronym that goes something like this: KISS, Keep It Super Simple or Keep It Simple Stupid.

Visitors want to be able to navigate through your website, unhassled. They’ve likely come to your website for a reason, so make sure it’s easy for them to find it!


Looking for a little help with your website? Give us a buzz!

Josh Cox
Written by

Josh Cox

I'm Josh — I build, host and look after WordPress sites (and increasingly fast Astro / Next.js builds) for Oxfordshire businesses, from Didcot, since 2016. I also tinker with a few products of my own on the side.

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