The design of the customer’s site should be thought out in the smallest details and executed using new techniques and practices. But often, designers out of a mechanical habit include elements in the layout that do not carry any positive effect and only complicate usability.
The design of the customer’s site should be thought out in the smallest details and executed using new techniques and practices. But often, designers out of a mechanical habit include elements in the layout that do not carry any positive effect and only complicate usability. Dova Management has prepared a list of typical mistakes for you not to follow.
Error 1: Social Network Icons
A new visitor to the site is a victory. And the bright social network icons are dedicated ways to go beyond the limits of the resource. After leaving the site, the visitor, most likely, will not return. If your goal is to increase the public’s traffic of the company in social networks, then this is the right way, but it is a failure to promote the site.
Alternative
The best way is to use social media plugins rather than link buttons. Instead of directly navigating to the pages of social networks, let visitors leave your website like your community or subscribe to a social media account without leaving the site.
The second way is to move the icons down the page and make them less bright.
Error 2: Hackneyed photos from the photo stock
Large images with high resolution – an undoubted trend in web design. High-quality photos increase conversion. But banal photo cliches (such as the WOW-face) will take the opposite effect.
Alternative
Several options are depending on the budget planned by the client.
The first is to take unique photos. Hire a professional photographer who will take the material. If the budget is small, you can do even a photo from a smartphone.
The second option is to choose a photo from the stock, but not the most popular. Photos should be of good quality, but not look staged.
An authentic amateur photo is more attractive than clichéd, which the client has seen hundreds of times.
Today there are “authentic” photo stocks specializing in original, non-stop photos, as in your Instagram feed.
Error 3: Email Links
When you design the page “contacts” there is a question about the availability of an email address. Most often, when you click on the email link by default, the mail client window appears. If not, then you need to copy the address, save it, open your mail, paste the address … So long and annoying … It is better not to do this – the client thinks so.
Alternative
Dova Management recommends to use email forms. With their help, you can also:
track and analyze letters;
Filter messages using mail applications (Mymail, Gmail);
Use original fields.
Avoid email links: “naked”, they will look like spam and annoy users.
Error 4: Orientation to the client, not to the user
For a company, a website is an effective way to express themselves. Therefore, each page screams which company is wonderful and what it offers to the client. But do users go to the site for this? Who cares to read ten “sheets” of boasting? No one, right. You will not win the trust of a potential client by open self-promotion.
Take, for example, this site. Are you interested in reading what innovations the company has brought to the market since 1949? Hardly.
Alternative
The designer must explain to the customer that the site is primarily aimed at the user and that it needs to be focused on the user. Benefits for the visitor – this is not the functionality of the company. This is a proposal to solve the problems of a potential buyer.
Instead of “we have been making our yogurt according to traditional recipes since 1930, we milk the cows and feed them only rhubarb”, write: “Are you tired of having an incomprehensible tasteless mass from a plastic cup? Appreciate the high quality of our natural product … “
Error 5: Ghostly CTA Buttons
Ghost buttons usually have a familiar shape, are a sentence or appeal, and differ from the usual only in transparency. But for all their attractiveness, they reduce clicks. Why? Because the client does not perceive them as buttons. This is a ghost.
Alternative
Very simple: stylize the buttons, especially the CTA-buttons, under the usual. A few secrets:
Choose the color of the buttons, contrasting the entire color scheme of the site and the background.
A rectangular button with rounded edges works best.
The call should coincide in meaning with the desire of the client. Remember to use trick words. The button “Take the goods” is psychologically more pleasant for the client than “Buy the goods”.
New trends and technologies are constantly appearing in web design, and obsolete techniques are forgotten. The main thing is to find the middle: not to chase fashion, but also not to miss trends. Both the designer and the customer need to have common sense, while the designer still needs to create a website for the client.
