Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Design Your Website ?
Posted by Spyros Panagiotopoulos in Website Design / CSS
First impressions DO matter on websites. As when we meet new people, visiting a new website can be a great experience and the most crucial moment is the first 3-5 seconds when we open up a website’s main page. The very first thing that every visitor notices is how the website is arranged. At that point everyone is looking for a clean, well read and versatile design in order to keep on exploring and read more things.
However, it’s devastating how many webmasters tend to make mistakes that they should really have avoided in the first place. Doing some things wrong on your website design can really cause problems on enticing new readers. What i’ve noticed over the years is that people tend to make the same mistakes and if those were excluded, their designs most times would have been pretty well implemented.
Are you another one who makes these mistakes ?
1. Not Choosing Appropriate Colors / Contrast
I cannot state how important is that people are able to easily read your text and not get pain in their eyes on the attempt to read parts of your website. Keep your colors simple and readable. Notice that for reading purposes, a white background and black text is usually the best choice. It’s not a coincidence that books do follow the same color principle.
2. Using Frames and Using Tables The Wrong Way
DO NOT USE FRAMES. They are probably the worst thing that has happened in the http development. Not only they are very slow in loading times but also make your website MUCH uglier. Avoid them at all costs. Moreover, do not use tables where you don’t need to. Tables are a way for showing data in order and not a way to design your website. For design purposes use DIVs along with CSS.
3. Having Too Many Images on a Single Page
Do not overdo it with images. Certainly they are kinda nice to watch and most times attract people as well but nobody wants to wait 10 seconds for a webpage to load due to many images involved. Be reasonable and try to keep it at most 3-5 images per webpage.
4. Not Having a CLEAR Way to Go Back Home At Every Page
There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to reach the home page of a website easily. Make the way back home easy for EVERY webpage that you have created. A good way is to have a clickable header that redirects to the main page or/and also have a visible link at each of your pages.
5. Having to Scroll Down to See Important Part of Website Like The Main Menu
Who wants to scroll down to view the navigation menu ? Remember that each time anyone refreshes a page visits the top part of it. It’s really essential that important parts of your website, like the navigation menu or probably the login form are located in the upper half of your pages. It is very frustrating for everybody to have to scroll down to reach reusable things.
6. Not Using CSS and DIVs
Do you use CSS to design your pages ? If not, you are losing too much. Also, do you use tables instead of DIVs ? It’s always very important to be up-to-date with the web design world and learning such techniques will vitally help you.
7. Not Having a Means to Navigate (menu maybe) at Each Of Your Pages
As with the HOME link, it would be a mistake to not include visible links to other important parts of your website. Imagine that a visitor read an article at your articles section and then went on reading the tutorials section. After some time he realizes that he would like to email the first article he read to a friend, but he cannot find it ! (Of course there is a back button, but you get the point 
) Should you have created a visible link to your articles or a nice search form, this thing would not have happened.
8. Using Fancy Colored Text as Regular Text Font
Red or yellow text is probably nice for some parts of your text. After all, studies have shown that yellow highlighted keywords invoke people’s eyes(no wonder there are too many of them). However, as with most things, overdoing it can be fatal.
9. Choosing Too Small Size of Text Or Too Small Line Height
If people cannot easily read your posts, they won’t stay at your website or blog for much time. Your writings should be easily read without any effort. This not only involves the size of your font but also the line height, which is the vertical space between two adjacent lines and it should be big enough so that text is easily separated by the human eye.
10. Changing Your Layout Often
Once you have finished your website layout, stick with it. It may be tempting to you to always change it, but visitors will certainly not like. People do not like changes on the websites they visit. After all, why would anyone need to readjust themselves in order to be comfortable with a website. It’s already enough that people have to like your initial design, don’t make it even worse for yourself.
Always pay attention to details because most times it’s the little things that make for big changes. Now, go back and check your website. Do you still make these mistakes ? 
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Nice observation and thnx for advice.
Thanks for the tips… they certainly are useful to have in mind.
Jorge Mafud
Mafud Abogados, Mexico.