2019 is a new year and a new you. Oh, and a new business website too! You're ready to take massive action and rebuild and design your website and we have some tips for you. We asked one of our web developers to give us some tips and below is what she came up with.
THE BIG DON'Ts
1) Don't sacrifice the function for design.
A beautiful designed website is awesome and we all love that eye appealing site that stands out. But you must make sure it still is functional and serves a purpose. It seems as we hit 2019, design is a huge focus and we agree but want to remind you that you should still stay focused on function.
An example we found online would be from a website: https://asaro.co.uk/
This website is stunning and well designed, but at first glance you don't really know what they do. Even after scrolling a little while you still might be confused. The goal is to provide beauty with function.
2) Don't overwhelm with too many call to actions.
This is tricky because you don't want to NOT provide them with a call to action, but you don't want to give them too much to decide. You should think very strategically how you want your users to journey your website (or mobile app). Giving them too much can cause them same affect as not giving them enough. DON'T. DO. THIS.
3) Don't use scroll hijacking.
Scroll hijacking is where you change how scrolling on your website works. Usually people expect an up and down experience. This is very simple to follow and a very "good" and confusing website we found that fits this hijacking tactic would be: http://clementvion.fr/
4) Don't use fonts that are hard to read.
Fonts can be fun to use and we agree. However, there does come a point where you need to put your foot down and say no. When a visitor comes to your website they should be able to read instantly what message you're trying to portray.
An example we found would be this website (also we noticed it was not secure!): http://lakecotrails.com/
5) Don't take trendy designs to the extreme.
We all have that one person who we know who just goes a little too extreme for their own good. The same happens in web design too. Bold fonts are pretty trendy right now, but how BOLD should you go? Well we found an example of someone going a little too bold: https://www.fei.org/
Summary
If you are guilty of these 2019 top don't do's, drop everything you're doing and call us at 616.717.1151 and we will forgive you for your web design sins and bless you with a new design (granted you pay us). We love all creativity and pushing the envelope is a good thing, but just try to keep your end users in mind as well.
Just because you like it, will they?