POSTED BY: Caitriona Butler

The Seven Deadly Sins of Web Design

6th Jun, 2018

The Seven Deadly Sins of Web Design

Even at the best web agency, designing a website can be a challenge and every business needs a website designed with usability in mind. People can have a range of different opinions on what constitutes good or bad design but don’t get caught committing one of these seven deadly sins…

1. Dark UX Patterns

Deliberately tricking users into performing certain actions though misleading or confusing design.

 

2. Including a footer on a page with infinite scroll

Footers can contain a variety of useful information, from links to contact details. If you’re implementing infinite scroll, you might consider moving the footer information to a sidebar.

 

3. Tiny body text

If it’s so small only the search engines can read it, does it even count as content? Yes, I realise this text is pretty small.

 

4. Forgetting to user-test

Sometimes incorrect design assumptions will only emerge with use. The earlier in the design process these are spotted, the better.

 

5. Unnecessary animation

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

 

6. Not optimising for speed

A slow website harms your user’s experience and can lose you site visitors.

 

7. Auto-playing videos

Those irritating sidebar ads that start talking at you and you can’t figure out how to pause…

Caitriona Butler, Web Developer.
When not scouring twitter for examples of what not to do on the web, Caitriona can be found crafting robust and effective responsive web sites across a range of programming languages & technologies at Neworld, a Dublin based branding, creative, design and web agency.