The Common Mistakes in Web Design

Newbies in the field of web designing tend to check out other websites to guide them in their creative journey. Unfortunately, they either stumble on the numerous website clichés, or they lack enough experience to judge which constitutes a good or bad website design. As such, we present here a list of some common mistakes that first-time designers make in the creating a layout for a website.

First would be something that seems aimed at many people. Even I, myself, have used - and abused - the usage of this mistake. Many people would seem to think that black is a safe background color. And a scroll bar color, a text color, in fact, and everything color… since black is a neutral color, it’s rather easy to match up with other colors. So easy, that in fact, it’s used in everything. Everything, as in it’s the main color of all your text, graphics, background - for lack of better description, everything.

There’s a problem, though; soon, you begin to notice, why does my site look so dark, even on Sitegrinder? Well, no wonder. You’ve almost buried it in black. That is one of the biggest website blunders you’ll ever encounter. Even though you’re designing for a gothic or emo site, it doesn’t mean that you have to use black and only black. You may complain that you use other colors, such as white, red, and the like, but you’re not really using them effectively until they actually look like an accompaniment color, not just an accent to break the black. Someone once said that color is life. Black isn’t even a color, it’s the absence of it. So how do you expect people to visit your little nook if it looks dead?

Another philosophy that causes people to back away slowly from your site as if it were a rabid dog is the thinking of "more is better". More isn’t essentially better, and there’s only so much that you can cram into a tiny page before it overwhelms the web surfer and makes him or her want to go away from your website. Sure, a bit of this and a pinch of that wouldn’t hurt; but if you’ve got too much going on at a page in your website, many people tend not to view it or switch to another page while it’s loading.

The reason? Slow loading time. The internet was created for convenience and speed. It’s not a surprise, then, that most people browsing the internet aren’t that patient as they would be with other stuff. If a site doesn’t manage to load in 30 seconds under DSL, they close it. There’s a lot more websites out there, which can offer the same services that you can, but loads faster. What do they have to lose?

Apparently, you’re on the losing side here. So you either have to shape up or ship out. Keep in mind that that is why multiple pages were created and webbed together to make a site; a single page wouldn’t have handled all of the content. So, make use of your multiple pages by distributing the action evenly throughout them. And get a decent layout using a Sitegrinder demo.

Sitegrinder
Contains tutorials and such on building your own website from Photoshop without any manual coding.