What are the most common web design availability errors that you will make?

In the past decade, high quality availability has been at the core of the industry's discussion, as it is increasingly important to users. Good availability can also help build brand awareness, so as to improve the user's evaluation of a website or a company. Today, people are still paying close attention to availability because companies, large and small, have proved how important a good availability policy is.

In the past few years, good availability has become the core of successful startups. In most cases, a simple idea is the most creative. Availability mainly refers to making a function or product easy to use, but at the same time maintaining a high level of product quality.

Today, many articles talk about universal significance. After years of discussion on this topic, it seems that it is still difficult for web designers to understand it. Availability is no longer a joke. The following suggestions should be printed and pasted onto the wall opposite your desk.

Link color

I often find that some links on some pages are not highlighted in some form when I browse the webpage. This is the most stupid mistake I have ever seen. I would like to visit those links that use the default blue pages, instead of links that are in the same color as normal text. You need to know how to navigate between pages and where to click links. You can't expect them to search for links over all the text lines with the mouse until they find that the mouse arrow turns into a "little hand ".

　　

 

I fully understand that sometimes links cannot be highlighted in a certain color for design purposes, which makes them too abrupt. This is completely understandable. However, you can add text styles or dotted boxes. All you need is to emphasize links in one way or another.

The accessed link should also be displayed in different ways to distinguish it from the default link color. This helps users know what they have accessed and determine where to go next. Some websites may confuse users, but letting them know what they have accessed will definitely make them better impressed with your website.

Bad typographical

When we talk about typography, it doesn't mean we need a big title or a beautiful text. When considering ease of use, formatting is not so important, but how to make our content easy to read is important.

A closely arranged large text segment can cause headaches for those who read it, but it should not cause headaches for designers. He simply needs to increase the line height, segment, increase the text size, and change the font to make it easier to read.

In web design, it is not very important to combine fonts and colors to wake up visitors. Of course, it would be better if you would. In the past few years, we have always put the aesthetic importance above the functionality. In fact, the most important feature of a website is its ease of use. It does not have much limitations as in the graphic design field. Sometimes we don't care how nice it looks, but what we need is that it works normally.

Let me explain it further. the two latest design trends on the internet, minimalism and flat design, are extremely simple and focus on the presentation of content rather than the background image. one reason behind the increasing popularity of minimalism and flat design is that they are very simple, and work well-sometimes it's hard to believe that such a simple website can achieve great success. You enter the website, read the content, and then leave, nothing to distract you, no Flash, no Javascript that slows down website loading, no nice flowers or drawings, just content.

　　

 

Now, you should understand how important it is to make the content easy to access, do not spend too much time thinking about how to make the website more beautiful-no matter how beautiful the font is, if others cannot read it.

Do not refer to conventions

It is very important to refer to the design conventions and usability suggestions, because no matter who you are, as long as you follow the instructions, users will spend as much time on your website as they do on other websites, which means you and others are on the same starting line.

For example, you can better understand what table I want. This website has a link in its navigation bar to exit the page. The function of this button is different from that of the navigation bar that is generally understood. Such a design violates the design conventions.

Fortunately, the situation has improved a lot in recent years, but some low-level errors that should not occur can still be found, such as the failure of the link above the loop display module or the pop-up box when you click the link. Therefore, follow the design conventions.

Avoid answering questions

Users can browse Web pages. Maybe you want to entertain yourself, maybe you want to find information, maybe you want to keep in touch with your family or friends, maybe for other purposes. No matter what they do, there will always be a goal.

The most important thing you need to remember now is that in most cases, users are seeking some information online. They go to Google to search for something, they go to Wikipedia to learn something, and they go to enterprise sites to learn product information. They always have a goal.

　　

 

When I explicitly want to find the answer to a question on the web page, they will not be able to find it. This problem has happened to me n times. I can understand why design agencies do not always highlight price factors, because there are too many variables in a project, but I just can't understand why a hair salon doesn't tell me how much it costs to get a haircut, and I can't understand why the website of the car washing company highlights how much it costs to clean the car, why are you still building a website on this earth? I just think this is useless to you and your visitors, and neither of you can obtain any useful information.

It is a good idea for visitors to understand their intentions when they visit your website. If someone wants to download a blog topic, they will be guided to the download area. If they want to play games, then try to put more games on it. If they come to understand the product price or the services you can provide, highlight them.

The reason you need to consider the needs of your website visitors is that your website is not built for yourself. If you built it for yourself, you should not connect to the Internet, you can simply view it on your own computer. A website is built for visitors. Visitors have a need to implement them!

Clickable Area

Because I bought a Mac, I never use the mouse. In fact, I bought a magic mouse, just three days after they were published and sold. For me, there is no need to use the mouse. I use touchpad to move the pointer on my computer. But I remember that when I was still using PC five years ago, I also had a variety of spam mouse. They are not always accurate and often difficult to locate when hovering over small blocks.

Now I don't have this problem any more. But the web is not just for me. There are hundreds of millions of users, so you should understand that not all of them are so proficient in using these wonderful tools.

Small pieces of clickable areas are sometimes uncomfortable. You may want to make the font look a little smaller, because you believe it looks pretty, but you have to consider the impact of your decision on availability (let's take a look at readability ).

It is important not only to ensure that links are visible, but also to make them clickable. The smaller the area, the harder it is to click them. There is a reason why the website tends to be mobile-that is, the layout needs to adapt to a smaller screen. One of the things to adapt to is the button, which should be larger on a portable device as recommended so that they can be easily clicked.

The same policy applies to the desktop environment. The New Trend of flat user interfaces is the Evangelist of this concept. You don't have to worry about clicking large and clear links. It makes it easier for your users to browse. Once again, focus on functionality to make the appearance a cherry on a magic cake.

The contact information is missing.

I am more angry with a few things than bad customer services. One of them is that you cannot contact Customer Service or the company responsible for the transaction.

As we discussed earlier, people always visit webpages with purpose. If their purpose is to contact you, then from their perspective, if you cannot find the contact information, this page is useless.

　　

 

There is no excuse for not providing contact information. If you do not want to make your phone number public, you can leave your email. By the way, you can also buy a cheap mobile phone with a cost-effective package, leave this number, or apply for a new e-mail. Do you want to avoid spam? You can use a contact method that is not automatically recognized by the machine. It's no big deal to share Twitter or Facebook addresses. This is nothing, as long as you can give your customers a chance to find you in some way.

Search function

Many users are task-oriented. That is to say, they come to the website to obtain specified information and are not interested in other things. in this case, you will find out how important a good search function will become.

However, this does not mean that you need to provide a search bar on each page. If you are running a design company, there is only one single-page website for providing project and contact information, there is no need to provide the search function.

　　

 

However, if you are running a blog or any other website with the main content, searching will be the first feature that many users will use, research shows that the proportion of users who will search for the search bar at the first time accounts for more than half of all users, which is really far beyond our imagination.

If you run a website on a platform similar to WordPress, you can use its internal integrated search function. In addition, you can always use the search provided by Google, because the Smart Search Engine may have indexed all or most of your web pages, you no longer need to write your own search function, so you have no reason not to use it on your website.

Mandatory registration requirements

It is much better to allow users to preview software or functions before they have to register or make a payment. Some excellent concepts or ideas on the Internet always require me to register first, which is unpleasant.

No, I don't want to leave my phone number, address, and shoes to you before I can use your app. I need to try it out immediately to decide whether it is suitable for me.

This statement is also agreed by Luke Wroblewski, a mobile UX/uidesign master (for reference, at the end of the article. He believes that users should first gain a glimpse of the product before making a decision. This is very simple, and it all means.

　　

 

No matter what you do, whether it's sales or production, do not require online users to make payment (burden) if they are not sure they need the product ), otherwise they will feel cheated, and of course you will lose them forever. A good example is fruit ninja, a popular game on the iOS platform, which always appears in the form of a free sample version. After a period of time, that is, when you are fascinated by this example version, you will feel that you want a bigger challenge, and then you have bought the complete version of the game. this is what I did, and I think it is true that in the past, will I buy this game if I cannot try it at the beginning? Nonsense.

This is not just a course for designers, but also for many companies and manufacturers. If your product is good enough, do not immediately ask users to order it. On the contrary, you should give them a free trial of your product as soon as possible. You should be sure that if the product is as good as you think, they will buy it.

Registry ticket

Another issue that Luke Wroblewski often mentions in his key tips is the registry list. I have used registration. You really want to register an account immediately (because it can meet your needs to some extent), but because the Registry ticket is too long. Therefore, you may give up registration so that a potential customer will lose.

Make the registry list as simple as possible. Only the most important information, email address, password, and user name are required. After registration, you can ask them to enter more details. This is also in line with the same principles mentioned above. To submit your application, you must first try your product. If the customer is not sure whether they like your product, why will they give you their home address, real name and title? At most you get fake information that you may not get before they decide to use your product.

　　

 

Today, many websites can be accessed through Twitter or Facebook. This is great, making logon very simple and fast. You do not need to remember too many accounts and passwords. As long as you can log on to Facebook, you can log on to websites registered using APIs. Although not all users use this method, please provide users with this possible logon method.

Inconsistent Design

If the website has a white background and a top navigation area, do not black the page and move the navigation to the bottom of the page. It may make me wonder if I am still on the same website. I don't want to waste time on this issue.

The layout of the entire website must be the same. Set a number of columns for your page grid system, whether it is a few columns, as long as it is appropriate, and implement this rule throughout the website. The same rules apply to the background color, link color, layout, and design principles. In short, before clicking the "about" Page, I can clearly know that I am still on the same website.

Misuse of images

One basic principle of design is not to use the elements you actually need. This is also true for images. Do not use them just to fill up pages. Research shows that users tend to ignore images that only fill pages. So if you have nothing to show, what I don't want to see most is a random image.

If you decide to use images, at least make sure they are placed in the correct position. I hate a website, write the text to a two-column wide table, and separate the text with a whole row wide image. This always reminds me to consider: Should I continue to look at the second column on the right and then the first column under the image, or should I first look at the first column under the image? This is really annoying. what's even more annoying is that different websites use different methods to solve this problem. If you want to use an image, make sure that the image will not affect you too much while reading the text. This is the most important thing. All I need is reading.

Oh, by the way, if you want to know why I don't want to consider this question (or why users don't want to consider it), I strongly recommend you read Steve Krug's book. You can find the link of this book in the final reference of this article.

Conclusion

If you want to become a good web designer, you only need to follow the steps above. You don't need to be a user experience expert. What I wrote above is really just some common sense, but most of the time it is they make a top-level website different from a decent website.

This is also largely attributed to your interest in users. If you create a website to maintain your livelihood, you do not need these rules. You may also be a less self-expected designer and will fail within several years. If you consider more for your visitors and want to provide them with a good website experience, you need to know what is the basic element for starting to process. As mentioned above, websites do not need to be beautiful. It should be remembered that nothing is more beautiful than a simple website with excellent running performance.

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