Website Design Mistakes:

1.  Font problems:  You should have high contrast between the font and the background.  People tend to strain their eyes in order to see whats on the page, or just go to a diferent page when there is low contrast.  Also size you text accordingly.

2.  Flash:  Flash is seen all over the place and can get very annoying and cumbersome to load for narrow band connections.  To make your website look better, avoid using flash and try color, font, and design changes.  These are more pleasing to the eye because they don’t flash or blink and load much quicker.

 3.  Links:  You should keeps links like they were originally designed.  Linked text is usually underlined and a different color.  Also try to differentiate between links and visited links.  Opening pages in new windows can get very annoying.  Try to avoid this whenever possible.

4.  Size:  Webpages with a lot of media tend to take a while to download even on broadband connections.  People are in a hurry these days and do not want to wait to view content.  Some remedies would be limiting the use of large pictures by using thumbnails, but still provide a link to the larger picture if the use desires.  Also link to videos rather than putting them in without warning the user that they are going to be there and take time to load up. 

5.  Confusing navigation:  Make sure that people can easily navigate through your site.  The best sites are the ones that are very simple.  This provides all the content on one page, so that people don’t have to scroll, and makes it easy for a non experienced web-user to go about your site.

 6.  CSS usage:  CSS is a powerful tool that will help anyone create a website that is pleasing to the eye and simple.  Use CSS to format your websites rather than tags inside the HTML that code for the font.  This makes it easier for you to go back later and change your site with the press of a few buttons.  This way you can keep your users interested becuase of the color, font, and design changes that only cost you a few moments of your time.

 7.  Target audience:  Targeting your website to please 7 year old children with little bunnies won’t work on adults if you are trying to sell blood pressure medication.  Make sure that you keep your target in mind.  Try to think about what would attract them to your site, what would please them.  Often most web designers want to put what they want in a site and never think about who they are trying to communicate with.

 8.  Amount of material:  Too much on one page may make user confused.  Most people don’t want to have to search through a page to get what they want and often will leave without really looking if the infomation is not right in front of them.  For this reason use links at the top and bottom of the page.  Also, if you can try to split up a page that you would normally have to scroll through into many pages or use anchor tags to help users find what they want.

Most design flaws tend to come from people just not thinking and just making the website.  Before you actually make one, just sit down, relax and use that brain of yours.  Think about your audience, content, color scheme, font, organization of content, and multimedia.  Plans things out and your site in the end will come out much better and more organized.  Also use your friends to find out how things look or sound as you progress.  What is pleasing to your eye might seem discusting to someone else’s.