7 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid

Although there are many things that should not be included into websites for the sake of the best user-end experience, there are several commonly recurring annoying design problems amateurs make.

1. Embedded Sound Files
-Have you ever gone to a site, and then some random songs start playing and your hand flashes over to the mute button to save your ears? Why would your visitors want your songs? Unless your site truly needs an embedded sound file, please please please, DO NOT use them. If you absolutely must have music (if you’re creating a website for a band or something) try use flash or something with the option of turning music on but with it initially off. Don’t forget that many users browse your site from the library, at night and a variety of other circumstances that require silence.

2. Pretty (BIG) Images
- Try to keep your image files small. Reduce the quality to a point where it is still clean but has a small file size. Many new webmasters create images or upload camera photos that are upwards of 2mb (megabytes) per file. The larger your files, the longer your site will take to load, and if at a certain point your site is slow to the point that it seems to just be frozen, you will scare away your visitors.

3. Fancy Scripts
-A lot of people like to play around effects. I myself am a loser for shiny effects. However, it is very unprofessional to have shiny flashing things everywhere. Despite the tendency for people to like flashy things, clean and simple is nearly always better. Some reserved spice here and there is nice though :]

4. Plugin Cursors
-On some sites, there are those annoying plugin cursors that ask you to install a script which gives you trailing effects behind your cursor, or a cursor that fits the theme of there website. If you must use custom cursors, please use javascript and a .cur file.

5. Flash Overuse
-Websites made purely with flash are very interactive and can look great but they have a bad tendency to be annoying if the user wants to use the back or refresh button to reload from the initial screen. Try to intersperse flash throughout your site if you are using it and make sure there are still alot of php and html files to anchor down the pages the visitor wants to travel back and forth to.

6. Too many Features
-Don’t put too many features on your website before theres ample reason to create them. Why have a forum if your site has five registered member, all of whom are your close friends who registered only because you forced them to? A wiki with a site that doesn’t draw an ample amount of traffic will scare other visitors away when they come expecting a Wikipedia like website on the niche, but see absolutely no content. Trust me, I’ve tried that.

7. Color Scheme
-One Word: Black. Black is extremely overused by new webmasters. Its true that black background with white, yellow, etc foreground color is viable but its often overused. The weirdest thing for me is seeing a professional sounding site with just white text and a black background. Especially if it’s a site with a focus on psychology. How are you supposed to help people with their lives if your website LOOKS depressing. However, some gaming sites and hobby/personal sites look awesome with black.

These 7 are not always mistakes, but they are often implemented incorrectly or doesn’t fit with the intended site. Remember when designing your website to keep your websites overarching goal in mind.