There are many amazing examples of great web page design to be seen when we browse the internet. There are also many examples of poor user experience from which we can learn valuable lessons about what not to do on our own websites. So what are some of the top mistakes and how can they be avoided? Here we look at four of the most common clangers.

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1. Too Many Image Sliders

A few well-chosen relevant images can be very effective. However, if you add more than five, you risk simply including content that will impact negatively on your user experience. Keep it concise.

2. Over-Riding Basic User Functionality

This is a common habit – for example, you may have experienced a website that suddenly takes over when you are happily scrolling through the content and takes you to a point that you have not chosen. Not being given full control is at best annoying and at worst extremely frustrating – let the user decide where he or she browses.

3. ‘In’ Fonts

It is a mistake to jump on the bandwagon and fill your pages with a font that might be the ‘in thing’ – often a font that looks good in print can be unreadable or disappear when scrolling. Stick to classic thickset user-friendly fonts.

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4. Oversized Fixed Headers

These can be great at reducing the amount of scrolling a user needs to do to navigate your site, but the bigger they are the more body content they hide. Keep them small.

Whatever you or your business’s interest in the web design process, whether you are working in web design in Kent or a company director in Cheshire, it is important to be aware of these common pitfalls so you can learn from the mistakes that others have made. There are many web design companies that can offer further advice on this topic, such as www.eqmedia.co.uk, or online information is available from the World Wide Web consortium, w3c.

Building a website is not an easy task: identifying the stages of the customer journey, revisions, re-design and ensuring you have enhanced your search engine optimisation are among some of the many things that can cause heartache. Avoiding the costly user experience errors described above will certainly help you along the way.