Website sins

The practice of web design might be tried and tested, but that still doesn’t mean that it’s easy. The perfect site is a variable concept which varies greatly on your needs; aesthetics, functionality and content must all be prioritised to cater to your audience and your long-term business plans.
Regardless of how good you are at designing a site, things can often be forgotten, or slip through testing. With more and more ecommerce competition emerging on an almost daily basis, its imperative that your site is as flawless as possible.
With that in mind, here are three website sins that you may be committing.
Sub-Standard Typography
As with many aspects of web design, sometimes it’s best if you keep things simple. Stick to a house style, and don’t overcomplicate things with excessive, vastly varied fonts.
Content may be key, but even the best headline will be ignored if it’s in Comic Sans. Demand attention with your headings, and make sure that body fonts are large enough to be read easily.
Unless you’re writing the small print, it’s best to stay above 14px. Additionally, do some testing, and see if a serif or sans-serif font will be more appropriate for your content and house style. Make your font contrast vividly with the background of your site – use black font on a white background and vice versa: Actually, there’s very few times when you’ll have to vary from this formula.
Also consider line spacing, paragraphs, spacing and text alignment, all of which can easily impact the readability of the content on your site.
A Lack of Colour
While you shouldn’t be afraid of utilising white space, a clean and simple site layout can sometimes fall into blandness. A lack of personality is an instant customer deterrent – even if you just use a single bold accent colour to compliment your site, you’ll create a much greater aesthetic appeal instantaneously.
For example, accent colours need to be bright, in order to draw attention to certain features, buttons and content, in contrast to a monochrome background. Whilst it should be bold, it also shouldn’t clash with any other prominent colours on your site. Finally, it shouldn’t fade into the background, and should be easily reversible if you need to highlight a certain area of your site.
Poor Images
Sub-standard images may not directly impact your users’ experience, but they can still leave a lasting impact. Utilising inferior quality images will lead to severe negative effects on the perception and reputation of your brand. In an increasingly competitive online world, great first impressions are vital, as customers will utilise any excuse to look elsewhere. Cliched stock photos and unrelated images can all impact your site’s bounce rate.
If any of these above sins are present on your site, remember that a single one can severely harm your online reputation.

The practice of web design might be tried and tested, but that still doesn't mean that it's easy.