7 UI/UX Design Mistakes That Should Be Avoided
User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are partners when it comes to users’ interaction with your website and application. The UI/UX design flow determines how to prioritize a seamless journey for your target audience to go through your content without any hiccups. There are endless best practices put forward by the best developers and UX/UI designers while building an app or website for you. Often, some key areas are overlooked by them while focusing on the user experience. An app or a website does not stand alone on a flawless UI/UX design but integrates with other key areas too.
In context, some of the highlighted areas often overlooked by UI/UX designers are-
1. Prioritizing Aesthetics Over Functionality Or Vice Versa
UI/UX designers are rather focused more on the visual aesthetics than the functionality of the website and application. It is a common mistake done on their part only to attract customers for more engagement. Boasting a fresh concept with visually appealing elements is always the first job but the work is generating more conversions. Sometimes, these may come out more vibrant than what you want to portray leading to high bounce rates. Some of the areas that UI/UX designers might overlook while pursuing aesthetics are-
- Slow web page loading speed
- Zig-zag forms
- Banner ads
- Scroll hijacking
- Unfamiliar custom icons
- Confusion with clickable buttons
- Not taking whitespace into consideration
- Poor sign-in or authorization or registration process
- Small clickable areas on the web page
2. Jumping On Every New Trend & Being Inconsistent
Trends come and go with this digital era, but try to avoid a mismatch of ideas and focus rather on what should best represent your brand and products. Including the current flow of trends, ideas, fonts, colors, and other visual elements every time something new comes out may make you inconsistent and you may lose customers. Experimentation is good once in a while but staying consistent is more subjective. The mishmash of trends may create clutter and confuse your users. Every UI/UX designer should put details in attention-seeking areas by using uniform color schemes, formatted text and so.
Overloading the users by jumping on every trend will decrease user experience as well as sales. You need to focus on coherent, minimalistic solutions that will reduce clutter and will guide users throughout the page seamlessly.
3. Ignoring Responsive Design Architecture
Responsive design architecture in the UI/UX design flow has been an important element that most business owners and entrepreneurs look into first while giving their projects to UI/UX design service providers in India. It is seen that 94% of them prefer mobile responsive websites and applications because about 64% of the conversions are done through mobile devices.
While making a website or application, a mobile-friendly one is more considerable for Google’s indexing to boost your ranks and conversions. This will optimize your web design and development process to load faster on all devices and screen sizes. Responsive design is way more adaptive, effective, efficient, cost balancing, and manageable on all devices (desktops, laptops, mobile phones and so).
4. Creating For Search Engines, Not People
Whenever we create any website or application, the first thing we obsess about is the search engines. Though it is essential that we follow the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guidelines, we also need to prioritize user navigation and user experience. Obviously, major search engines are fruitful for results, but you need to focus on what your target audience will interact with more. Rankings are the byproduct of SEO best practices and user utility. Create your website, application, and design for your users and the rest will fall in place.
5. Overlooking Content First
Often being focused so much on UI/UX design flow, UI/UX design service providers or designers forget the real hustle is in the details. The aesthetic, vibrancy, and trendy website or application will not do the trick. There needs to be refreshing, relevant, consistent content for the users and web visitors to interact with as well as will provide valuable information. Focus on creating landing pages (About Us Page, Help Page, Contact Us page, etc) at par with SEO guidelines that will ensure brand awareness, boost conversions and help in user navigation.
Some common details that are seldom overlooked while developing UI/UX design architecture are-
- No hierarchy of information for users to navigate through
- Too much text, without proper answers for users to engage
- Too much complex linguistics
- Grammatical or spelling errors on the text
- Too much focused on search engines rather than the target audience.
6. Complicating User Navigation
When users come to your page or application, they will not think so much, they will immediately go about what buttons are clickable, how they are hovering, and what is the usability. When focusing on UI/UX design flow, you need to focus more on the user’s usability and how they will interact with the web page first. Rather than focusing on creativity but leading nowhere. The three-click rule generally comes in handy, that is three clicks to get to any web page of a website.
Your user navigation should be focused on these pointers-
- Should be planned beforehand
- Consistent with primary navigation on other web pages
- Should be separable from other visual elements
- User navigation solutions should be different from mobile and a web
- Use short texts with clear labels
- Use generic terms that the users are more accustomed to
- Mark those links which were opened before for local navigation
- Avoid unnecessary pagination of content
- Focus on user’s freedom of control
- Always put a clear exit
- Do not use too many submenus
7. Overlooking compatibility with other apps
It is a very common mistake that people generally make. Overlooking the fact that your website or application needs to be compatible with the platform or device that is being used. It is not only the user experience and interface of the website or application that you need to check but also how it integrates with other apps too.
No application or website can function alone in a device like a smartphone. You need to ensure that your application or any other website can integrate with other systems in the mobile device, like per se the geolocation feature used by some apps and websites, hotspot, clock, calculator, and so on.
To conclude,
The real hustle to boost conversions starts with the UI/UX design integrity of any website or application but is always not limited to that area alone. Sometimes the details are missed out while focusing on the big picture which is the UI/UX design architecture. There is always a chance for correction by remaining focused on the content that highlights-
- Responsiveness
- Relevancy
- Refreshing yet accustomed to
- Readability
- Clarity with valuable information
- Accessibility