10 design mistakes that make the site look unprofessional

In this tea shop has a response to the era of Web sites, you do not seem to have a Web site is a difficult thing. However, when you consider that you may only be a personal name rather than celebrities, your shop is not a well-known manufacturers, open a website to say, and other influence extended to the intersection at the front of the time to find an art or something to do 5 dollars design.

Is that what you think?

I'm not going to go deep into the groove, the actual situation may be a little bit more than you think ... A little more complicated. Whether you're a leader in a fledgling business or not, a professional website can bring you more than you think. 10,000 steps back, "considering we are a small factory", rough site may be understood by users, but not necessarily acceptable. The vast number of websites that we visit every day have instilled in the user the concept of "what a normal/good website should look like" from head to toe.

Go further. A website that is not good enough will distract, hesitate, and tangle with users. People believe in big brands, or websites that look professional enough. If the site you are providing cannot attract them in a matter of minutes, even if it fails. How can a user suddenly start trusting you in this situation?

All in all, as far as possible to do professional design, grinding good every minute details, the role of the site to play to the maximum. Especially when you want to build a trustworthy brand, you need to carefully identify every detail. Even if your design ability is limited, if you can pay attention to the following 10 common design mistakes, also can make your site give a person enough professional feeling. Of course, if your business is much larger than a start-up, it is necessary to adopt a truly professional design team.

Note: The cases used in this article are startups, and if you have comments and suggestions for their design, they want you to leave a message on their website and make a better design for the promotion.

　　1, use the unreasonable template

Using a template is really a very convenient thing. The template for large enterprises is really not justified, but the start-up companies to use Bootstrap to do the site is absolutely understandable. Use similar bootstrap template as the foundation, borrow the designer's hand for brand and enterprise temperament a little customization, in fact, is a very good idea, if the communication is good, perhaps finally can present a very good website, for Enterprise's products and services is also very good addition.

But just apply the template without being adjusted and customized, the most common problem you encounter is that the template and the brand's own visual design can not be agreed, from the logo used in color, to the brand unique font, can not be a high degree of matching with the site.

But if you are really in this convenient and stretched, try to pick in all aspects and the brand image itself closer to the template, the sense of alienation to the minimum.

　2, the use of the Web site system's default appearance

And the Chinese site is not the same, English web site using a variety of fonts is a very easy thing. If you use bootstrap, Wordpress, such as tools to create a Web site, and just use the default settings, you can not fool anyone, you will be a glance of the things you lazy look out-even fonts are the default open Sans. The default appearance of WordPress is also the same reason. If you're not going to make a difference on the site visually, the damage to the brand is obvious.

Of course, if you can use fonts such as Font Awesome and CSS tools, there are Kantiki wonders. It can increase the icon library and style, so that bootstrap and other systems, have a beautiful consistent visual language.

There is no doubt that these carefully crafted original icons are naturally better than the universal icons built into the system. If you have your own ideas and ideas, why not look for icons, illustrations, and fonts that are more personalized and more in tune with your brand? Perhaps the cost of time and the cost of implementation are not as high as you might think.

3, the problem of typesetting contrast

The problem with typography is far less simple than most designers think. Words and letters look simple, but they can make a good design or ruin the entire layout.

In many "homemade" web pages, the most common problem is that the contrast between the title and the body font is low, and the information level of the entire page is not obvious. Just adjusting the font size is not enough to make a comparison, the header font should be heavier than the text, that is, the font should be thicker, make sure they are conspicuous enough to be more easily noticed by the eyes.

　4. Use dark background

Although the background is at the bottom of the page, but it is actually occupy the largest part of the site area, when users see the page will be the first time to feel, carefully selected background color is very important.

As a proven rule, a black-toned web site, other than a truly professional designer, cannot be seen. Using white as the basic background color is very safe, but most designers will choose a light gray bottom. It is worth noting that the higher the gray level of the site, the less the readability of the black text, in order to ensure that the site is readable, gray is best kept below 15%.

　　5. Multi-stage behavior call

Call to action, commonly referred to as behavioral calls, generally refers to directing users to do what you want them to do, registering accounts, clicking Buttons, and so on. In the Site page, the main call of action should be only one major, to know that the choice of obsessive-compulsive patients than you imagine a lot more, if there is no major, single call of action, users will be confused, and take a long time to make decisions, and then take action. Of course, there are a number of users will directly close the page to leave.

Putting everything on the page is just as effective as doing nothing. Remove the extra parts, filter out the most important things, and let the user do the most important things. Whether registering or opening a purchase link, put the most compelling and meaningful buttons in the most conspicuous position, focusing on the main thing.

　6. The problem of aligning and leaving white

To say that white space and spacing is an art is not too. It is one of the most difficult parts of the design to leave enough space and not allow too much spacing around the visual element. Gifted with too many articles to introduce the techniques of white and typesetting, but if you don't want to remember so many complicated techniques, recommend a simple and effective solution: the first step is to make sure that all elements are grouped together in a reasonable and appropriate manner, and that the second step is to give enough white leave outside of the set of elements ...

　7, not the professional copy

Writing a good copy is not a simple thing to do. But no matter what, you need to use the site to show what you need to express, especially if you want to sell things through the website. In this case, you need to make your copy easy to understand, proofread carefully, and make sure that the content is correct and accurate without spelling mistakes.

I often see some very embarrassing copy on the Internet, such a site will give people a site is still in the prototype stage of the rough feeling. Before the website is online, it is a good choice to find a friend with relevant experience to browse the whole station.

　　8, the question of readability

If you can't see it, then the best copy won't save your business. Many small details can affect the readability of your site's text, directly or indirectly affecting your carefully prepared content, making it difficult for readers to perceive it smoothly.

To solve the problem of readability, there are many problems worth noting. Line high too low will make the text difficult to read, too small font for many users are obstacles, shadow, italic and other effects will often affect the readability (especially in Chinese, traditional Chinese this situation is more serious), color contrast is not controlled better is disastrous. Some of these problems, while not too serious, may not cause too many hurdles for most users, but this can make users suspicious of your professionalism.

　　9, consistency of the problem

You should always keep the product and brand consistent, from brand design, website design to social media, packaging and advertising, should have brand recognition.

But before you reach these ambitious goals, take a step back and see that you need to keep the site itself consistent with itself. Is your site font style consistent? Logo on the color of the brand and the site's color scheme is the corresponding? are the shadow styles of each element of the site exactly the same, or "look similar"? Typically, you can solve a lot of consistency problems by simply cleaning up your CSS stylesheets.

　　10. Anti-Flow design

Whether you like it or not, the physical design is far away from us. The use of thick shadows and large-span gradients is rare in the current web design. Instead of looking for ideas in 3D special effects, you might as well embrace flat design guidelines.

Conclusion

The 10 items that are summarized today for you are basically the 10 design minefields most often encountered by startups and novice designers, and compare your site to see if you have encountered similar problems.