Biggest Web Design Mistakes

1: Abundance of Text
A wall of text is enough to scare any use away. No one wants to sit there and read paragraph after paragraph.

Some way around this:

• Bulleted Lists
• Highlighted key ideas
• Simple writing style
• Short paragraphs
  
• Well spaced

2: Fixed Font Size
Face it people, not everyone has the best eye sight now a day. It is important that your font is scalable for those that don't have 20/20 vision. 60% of the time text is tiny reducing readability for most people over the age of 40.

3: PDF Files
If you have a written document please don't have it open in a PDF file. Having a PDF file open in your browser is very anoying. Layouts are often formated for sheets of paper, which rarely matches the size of the user's browser window, which causes pixelated text and difficulty scrolling.

PDF's should be used for materials that will be printed such as manuals or packets or any information that will be read on paper not on web pages.

4: Not Answering Questions:
User visit sites because there's something they want to know or buy your product. The biggest failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for. Sometimes the answer is simply not there and you lose the sale because users have to assume that your product or service doesn't meet their needs. Other times the specifics are buried under a layer. Since users don't have time to read everything, such info might as well not be there. Most importantly never leave a user guessing what your prices are, always be clear with that information.

5: Not Coloring Visited Links
Knowing which pages users have already visited frees them from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over.

6: Making things look like Advertisements:
By nature people ignore anything that may look or be an advertisement. Web users have learned to stop paying attention to any ads and only focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately this means users may miss important information located on banners throughout your web page.

Some ways around this:

• Don't have any pop-ups
• Don't have flashy banners that look like ads
• Avoid placing banners in area that look like an ad would be placed

7: Bad Page Titles
Pages titles are that most important ways users discover your page. Since most search engines use your titles to find your page you want to use words that are commonly used and used frequently in ones vocabulary. A humble page title is your main tool to attract new visitors from search listings. A good way to titles you web page is by first starting with your company name and then adding a short description of it after. Try not to start out with the word 'The' or 'Welcome' unless you want to be alphabetized under 'T' or 'W'. Try to start with a letter that is closer to the beginning of the alphabet.