You’ve finally done it. You finally purchased the domain name of your dreams. Now it’s time to start designing! But before you do, take a look at the three biggest design faux pas that business owners make when designing their site, and learn how you can avoid them!
No Clear CTA
CTA is short for “Call to Action”, which is another way of telling your customer this is the action you should take. Too often business owners focus on creating fancy-schmancy intros but lack the most important detail: what the heck do you want the customer to do?
A good CTA can mean the difference between a sale and a customer leaving your site and never returning.
Some of the common mistakes business owners make when creating their CTA include:
- Generic Wording (i.e. “Submit” or “click here!”)
- Blends in with the design (Blue background with light blue CTA? Big no-no)
- Too Many CTA’s (choices overload!)
The good news is, there are easy fixes that can quickly result in higher conversion rates.
First, make sure that your wording is specific, clear, and concise. You don’t have to spell out every step of the action, but a simple change from “submit” to “sign me up!” May have a larger impact on conversions than you may think. Although it’s good to be unique, make sure you prioritize clarity over originality.
Second, make sure your CTA has high contrast as compared to the rest of your design. You can use WebAim’s contrast checker to make sure it’s easily visible to your potential customers (plus you get bonus points for making your website accessible!).
Lastly, make sure you don’t overload your visitor with options. Aim to have only one clear CTA. If more are required, make sure to have them contrast in color, with the main action being the most prominent.
Illegible Font
Want to lose visitors quickly? Choose a font that is illegible.
One major error I see in many websites is sacrificing legibility for “design”. When choosing a typeface, size, spacing, font-weight, and color the priority should always be readability.
Typeface
A typeface is the design of the letters or numbers and they usually come in a set. Different typefaces evoke different feelings and emotions in a person. Choosing the right typeface for your design can be difficult if you are not a designer and choosing the right typeface can make or break your design.
To make sure that you choose the right typeface, research websites that have the “feel” that you are going for. Avoid typefaces that are so “designed” that they become illegible. It’s important to note that at different sizes, typeface legibility can increase or decrease, so make sure you test the typeface throughout your design process to make sure it is legible at the size you want to use it.
Google Fonts is a great place to choose a typeface, font-weight, and size, and is really helpful since Google fonts are available in all major browsers. Sticking to one or two typefaces really helps with legibility and relying on font weights to create contrast can help to keep your design consistent.
Speaking of font-weights…
Font Weight
Font weight is how thick or thin the typeface letters are. Font weight choice can have a big impact on legibility. The key is contrast. The larger a discernible difference between the big letters and small letters on your website, the easier it is for your visitor’s eyes to scan and read your content.
Remember, visitors don’t read, they scan. In fact, one study showed that up to 79% of users tested scanned the information and only 16% read it word for word. This note alone should show the importance of choosing the right font weight.
Many times, business owners will add in too many font weights, or have font weights be the same throughout, making their website painfully difficult to scan.
One more tidbit: Keep your font sizes for the body no smaller than 14px. In general, you want it to be as large as 18-20 px for the body (paragraph) font. Keeping it between these sizes is a big boost to legibility while making it easy for scanners (bonus points if you use Rem units instead of px, 16px =1 rem in most page builders).
Color
Just as with the CTA’s many business owners’ information gets lost because of poor use of color with a font. Having blue on blue or light pink lettering on a white background is a recipe for your message being overlooked. From the beginning make a plan to make sure that your color choices are easily legible.
No Design Plan
Finally, a major mistake made by business owners designing their website: no plan. What if a building architect threw out his plan and told the builders: “meh, just go with how you feel”. That design would be pretty crappy. The same goes for your website. A website without a clear structure plan, idea, or customer journey in mind can do more harm to your business than good.
Frustrating interactions and user experience can cause users to have a negative view of your brand, enough of those can even turn away the most loyal customers.
To rectify this, just take some time to think about what you want your visitors to do. Plan out what you think they want to see first and what action you want them to ultimately take.
A little planning can go a long way in making your design an enjoyable journey for your visitor.
