subject: Web design - What you shouldn't do [print this page] Web design - What you shouldn't do Web design - What you shouldn't do
We all know that when designing a web page, the design and the website has to be attractive, engaging and most of all readable.There are more websites than I originally thought that can't seem to grasp this concept. Below is a list of the many, many mistakes people make when designing their website.
Having a black background with dark text on top. This is unreadable for the reader.
Having tiled and strong patterned background images. This is distracting, confusing and ultimately annoying to the reader.
Having everything centred on the page. Makes the website look boring and harder to read.
Having too many headlines, use of bold and italics etc. Again confusing and just looks messy.
Blinking text is unreadable, it distracts people's eyes away from the content their supposed to be trying to read.
Having sound when people load up your website. Not only is this highly annoying to the reader, as most of them don't want to listen to your music, but many of the sites that do this, don't have controls to turn the music off.
Allowing pop ups on your website. Even though you may get money to allow them, they are very annoying to the reader, and they will leave your website to get away from them.
Having large image files. By having these people with a slower internet connection will take ages trying to upload a page from your website. Adjust the file size, making the size small, before placing on your site.
Colour clashing. Really think about your colour palette, try to pick colours that work well together. Anything else will be too strong for the reader, won't be easy to look at.
Being inconsistent. By having all different font styles and sizes, this again will make your website unreadable, confusing and messy to the reader. Try finding one or two fonts maximum, and use the same size for the body text and have a different size for the headers.
