Creating a great web design these days isn’t simple; between mobile web design, responsive web design, and anything that will work well with a search engine optimization campaign — you have a lot of things to pay attention to, and a lot of strategies that people recommend.
What isn’t discussed very often is what not to do — because let’s be honest, there are plenty of web design strategies that used to work, really aren’t so effective anymore, but which you don’t want to dispose of just in case they come in handy eventually.
There comes a time when you really need to clean house, though. So if you don’t know where to start, here are a few tips and tricks that you definitely need to usher out the door in order to give your business the best digital marketing experience possible:
- Seeing mobile website optimization as an extra feature. A few years ago, mobile websites really weren’t popular at all. But now, it’s estimated that about four out of five consumers use apps on their smartphones to shop, and 34% of internet users typically access the web through their phones rather than a desktop or laptop computer. Quite simply, mobile web is necessary now, and your business needs to optimize for it.
- Pictures! Videos! Crazy Fonts Crazy Colors! Yep, this grabs anyone’s attention — and it immediately turns them away from your website (not to mention, it means that your website probably loads very, very slowly). Internet users are savvy when it comes to surfing the web, and because there’s just so much content available, it’s easy to feel overstimulated. When you want to hook your audience, keep it simple.
- Comic Sans. Okay, Comic Sans is really just an easy target at this point, but there’s some truth behind avoiding a font like that: traditional fonts are overused at this point and many of them were never designed to be used on small glowing screens, which means that they can actually be tiresome to read.
So now we want to hear from you — are there any design strategies you think need to go? Anything you wish other web developers would stop doing? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
