Websites have come a long way. And what accompanied them in the long journey were many design trends, which appeared and disappeared, with new ones coming up now and then.
You can see many new design trends coming up every year, but do not fall for each trend you get to see.
It will help if you bear in mind that not all designs can be helpful for your business. In addition, many design trends can negatively impact the user experiences, driving visitors away from your website.
So, here we discuss the harmful website design trends to avoid:
Infinite Scrolling
You will find the infinite scrolling trend on many websites. It entails the benefit of a smooth webpage and relieving the visitor from clicking on other page numbers to transit from one page to another.
But, there are some disadvantages. Therefore, it is not a good idea to implement infinite scrolling on your webpage.
When there is infinite scrolling on your webpage, visitors cannot reach the footer of the page. But, the footer content is a crucial ranking factor for Google to rank pages in search engine results.
Another disadvantage of having an infinite scrolling page is the confusion it puts before visitors searching for specific content on your website.
Without the pagination facility, visitors have to keep scrolling to locate their intended content, and that poses a confusion before them. Therefore, it is certainly not the best feature to implement on your webpage, despite its presence on many websites.
Mobile Unfriendliness
What could be the ultimate objective of investing in your website? It is generating more leads and getting more conversions.
So, you should make efforts for your website to reach more and more people. But, you will miss out on a significant chunk of people if your website is not mobile-friendly because many people prefer browsing the internet on their mobiles.
Check out whether your website is mobile compatible. If not, implement the compatibility.
Ensure that your website has a mobile-friendly website design to optimize it for mobiles. It has become crucial because more and more people browse websites on their mobile devices, and increasing mobiles among more population segments.
Suppose your website does not adjust automatically to mobile devices. What will happen? Visitors will dump your website and go to a different website. As a result, you will lose traffic, and the bounce rate will increase, negatively impacting SEO.
So, you should hire a professional website designer to get your website designed with a mobile responsive design.
Alternatively, you can delegate the task to a web designing company. But ensure that you choose a reputed and trusted company that also has an experienced design team.
Stock Pictures
Pictures have a lot to do with improving the user experiences for visitors. And the practice of using stock pictures has been around for many years.
You might think that using stock pictures will serve the purpose, and there is no need for you to think further regarding any improvement in the pictures.
But that is the wrong idea. Instead, it will help if you use high-quality professional pictures on your website.
Stock images are not always perfect. For example, they can have bad shades or compositions that can affect user experiences.
Also, often you will see that the quality of stock pictures is not good and distracting. So, visitors will not be able to focus on a particular thing because of the distracting picture.
Autoplaying Multimedia Content
Including multimedia content, such as videos, that automatically plays when the page loads are not good. They do not provide a good user experience. It appears as if you are forcing visitors to watch the video. And that can irritate them, so they leave.
Instead, avoid auto-playing content and allow visitors to navigate themselves. Look for other ways of engaging them on your website.
Slow Loading Landing Pages
Check the loading speed of your web pages. Are they slow? If yes, then they pose a severe threat.
Slow loading pages drive away visitors and increase the bounce rate. As a result, the SEO suffers.
Many factors can contribute to slow loading pages.–bad coding, data overload, no caching, etc. Therefore, you should get rid of such issues.
Hire a website design agency to get things right to speed up your website. It will increase the user experience that will prompt visitors to stay on your website for long.
Random Pop-Ups
Pop-Ups serve their purpose. But, including them randomly on your web pages is an excellent way to chase visitors away from your website.
Most people get annoyed when pop-ups appear on the pages they visit. But, that also does not mean that pop-ups are meaningless. The trick is to use them prudently.
Offer some value to visitors through pop-ups. For example, allow people to leave behind their emails on your pop-ups for you to send them something for free, such as a free e-book or significant information.
However, try to avoid pop-ups as far as you can.
Multiple Fonts
Having different fonts on your website is a mistake that you should avoid. It erodes the appeal of your website. Instead, ensure you use a font family meant for websites, are easy to read and conform to your website design.
Confusing Navigation
Easy navigation is among the web page trends 2021. So, check whether navigation on your website is easy to understand or not.
If your website has several links, they can confuse or distract visitors. Therefore, you should have easy navigation, and that is also a ranking factor for Google to rank your website higher in search engine results.
To make navigation easier, include drop-down menus that will keep your website clean and allow visitors to find what they are looking for on your website.
Design the navigation bar appealingly and include pictures or icons instead of text to help visitors figure out where to click.
Conclusion
By having the right design on your website, you can increase traffic to generate leads. So, if you are making any of the mistakes outlined in this article, make corrections.
