10 Common UX Design Mistakes to Avoid
What is UI/UX? UI/UX integrates solutions designed to satisfy users’ goals on an online resource with optimum speed and efficiency. They are based on behavioural variables as well as a convenient visual environment. Although they are different words at first appearance, the experience demonstrates that they produce a beautiful design if harmoniously integrated.
The outstanding UI UX design is all components of the business. It can guide consumers easily via meaningful interactions and dramatically improve conversions.
Therefore, the financial cost of errors is equally considerable. Your bounce rate will rise if the users are unhappy with their experience. Sometimes, it’s the tiniest things, which may creep into the work of the finest designers.
We have differentiated the ten most prevalent errors to assist you in avoiding these in the future.
1. Ignoring Responsive Design
Responsive design is not a trend within the larger area of web design. It is an established component of having a profitable website in 2019. It is not news. Nonetheless, we continue to encounter websites that do not fully adapt in a way that maximizes the available screen real estate. As a result, responsive web design has still been included on this list.
Responsive web design allows your website to adapt and alter in real-time in response to the device being used. With more people accessing websites via mobile devices than desktop computers, your website must appear excellent on all screen sizes.
Additionally, responsive design enables a smooth user experience while switching between devices. According to Google research, 90% of users switch between devices to perform a task. If you do not even have a responsive website, you risk losing this massive population.
Responsive web design ensures an excellent user experience across all devices. Failure to create your website with a responsive layout may result in your users’ inability to enjoy their experiences while using a smartphone or tablet to browse your site. Avoid isolating millions of people due to a minor error. Redesign your website with modern web design trends and keeping responsiveness in mind for the best user experience.
2. Working for Search Engines and Not Users
Unsurprisingly, website owners become preoccupied with their specific keyword rankings in an era of ever-increasing digital competition. This emphasis on search engine rankings commits the critical UX error of ignoring the natural preference of a search engine, which is its user base.
While it is critical to building your web portal by SEO best practices, the ultimate goal must be to provide the best possible user experience. If done correctly, this will increase your search engine page rankings. It is critical to building your portal or website so that a positive user experience creates a lasting impression.
Numerous businesses struggle with giving purpose and establishing a relationship with their customers. Meaningful goods have personal importance for people and are designed to meet their requirements while adhering to their beliefs.
Numerous goods on the market are visually appealing and functional but lack significance. How are you establishing contact with your user? Consider the impression you’re leaving on your users. This will determine whether your consumers return to an app or remove it.
Empathizing users is critical for UX design. To the extent feasible, designers must abandon their frame of reference and assume the user’s role to build a market-leading mobile solution — applications designed for people first, followed by search engines.
3. A lot of Animations
Designers should make effective use of animations. While a robust design is the most effective weapon for capturing a customer’s attention, excessive reliance on animations has a detrimental effect on consumers. Be wise while selecting css frameworks, tools or other design elements.
Exaggerated animations might frustrate app users by preventing them from finding what they’re looking for in your program. As a result, designers must choose the most refined animations and apply them sparingly without impairing the user experience.
4. Complex Interface
Today’s top applications have one thing in common: they all have a straightforward user interface. Bear in mind that today’s consumers lead highly fast-paced lives. They want solutions that operate smoothly and promptly.
Anything that people find challenging to browse is instantly abandoned. Consider rethinking an app’s features when building it. Determine whether the navigation and functions available serve a purpose.
Is it possible to accomplish this more straightforwardly? If the answer is yes, then redesign. You may consider the soft box shadows to have simple yet aesthetic interface. Play with box shadow generator to create different box shadow styles and effects.
5. Poor Onboarding
Onboarding may be compared to a tour of a city. As a designer or product owner, you may think of new customers of your product as city tourists. Throughout the trip, you want to showcase the city’s features, pique their curiosity, and catch their attention.
From this vantage point, it’s clear that user onboarding is a critical component of product development and directly influences whether the user will successfully utilize or abandon your product.
The onboarding process may be flawless, and the user may breeze through it, but he will fall into an empty pit. The entire product is poorly thought out, and there is no assistance offered. Even if the customer completed the onboarding process, the remainder of the product might not feel straightforward to use. At this stage, you do not want your consumers to lose interest. It’s critical to consider the whole experience, how everything fits together.
After all, they’ve finished the onboarding process, which took some time and effort. When considering your product, consider your email correspondence, social media presence, and the general message you give to your users. It must operate cohesively, and onboarding is the first step toward developing the user-friendly experience that will earn you new clients.
6. Confusing Functionality with Design
Your website’s design should achieve the ideal mix of originality and usability. Recent years have seen a lot of discussion about personalizing your website with actual ui icons resources, photographs, innovative graphics, or interactive design features.
While aesthetics are critical for UX, they should not take precedence over the functioning of your website. Users desire originality, but they also want an easy navigation experience on your site. You should prefer accessibility in design. Accessible tabs are best example of keyboard interaction and other accessible features.
Similarly, your website’s utility should not come at the expense of originality. If your site is only functional, it may bore users and drive them away. Without excitement or a sense of adventure, your brand will quickly become forgotten. This is the inverse of what you desire. Your website must be visually arresting, aesthetically attractive, innovative, and one-of-a-kind. It’s the only way to differentiate your brand and earn client loyalty.
7. Forgetting Content
In 2019, the content remained king (and for any foreseeable future). Indeed, content has become increasingly important in recent years as people seek genuine, accurate information online.
Never undervalue the value of your material. For the best user experience, your website needs high-quality, authoritative content from professionals. Adhere to a few core content principles for optimal user experience, including the following:
- Utilize keywords throughout your article
- Pay close attention to quality
- Polish punctuation and grammar
- Consistently publish new blogs.
- Revise existing material to ensure it is current and relevant
- With content, guide consumers through the sales funnel.
- Convert more visitors into customers by creating landing pages.
Again, the consumer, not a search engine, should be the primary emphasis of your material. Ascertain that your material adheres to your brand’s voice and tone. It should give your consumers exciting and helpful information.
Include an About Us page, a Contact Us page, and a service description page. Simultaneously, adhere to SEO best practices to ensure your page ranks highly on the SERP. Sprinkle keywords throughout, include links to reputable websites, and acknowledge your sources.
8. Poor Contrast
Low Contrast = Lower Usability
- Color Contrast: You may create the ideal color combinations for your projects using a color scheme generator.
- Utilize contrast-checking software
- The contrast in Size: Establish a hierarchy by utilizing large headlines to grab the visitor’s attention and smaller font sizes for less critical information.
- Alignment contrast: Alignment enables the observer to recognize related components quickly.
Using components with minimal color contrast has also become fashionable in current user interface design. It evolved from the minimalist design movement, as lowering differences in some sections made the design look “minimalist.” Because designers could not reduce the intricacy of the information that required to be displayed, they opted for a low contrast design.
We have already discussed thin typefaces, but there is a greater danger: a light typeface and low contrast combination that significantly impairs user experience due to poor design.
While low contrast might not be a bad thing, it can have a detrimental effect on a website’s usability by making the content difficult to readability. Designers should take every precaution to avoid falling into this usability pitfall. Color converters are very useful to test different color systems.
There is a handy tool called Colorable that assists designers in setting the proper text contrast by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Once designers are confident they utilize the appropriate text contrast, they may change the website’s other colors and do fast multi-device/user testing to ensure the text is readable.
9. No White Space
Negative space is necessary to keep the user experience from feeling overpowering. A good application maintains a healthy mix of information and white space.
Recognize that you improve information breathing room to maximize the visibility of the features and aspects you wish to emphasize to your consumers. Attempting to provide everything by utilizing all available screen space will increase the rate at which you lose consumers!
10. Lack of User Testing
When incorporating fashionable concepts or UI patterns into a website’s prototype, it’s essential to test it on real-world consumers to avoid UX problems.
Basic usability testing will indicate whether or not it is viable to implement a scroll hijack, for example. Designers have little way of knowing if scroll hijacking will function without testing, and assuming assumptions is frequently costly.
Conclusion
If not carefully studied and executed, web design trends can result in numerous frequent UX errors. While UX designers should utilize their best judgment and not be afraid to innovate, they would be wise to extensively test their designs with real-world consumers to ensure optimal website usability.
Things in popularity come and go amid the insane profusion of web design trends. Within this turmoil, a balanced approach to aesthetics, efficiency, & usability is critical for identifying the UX trends that have proven to be the most effective and popular with users.
Web designers can create the most stunning color scheme, css page transitions, the most intricate scrolling motion, or the most spectacular parallax effects. However, if the human contact suffers, the user experience will suffer, and visitors will rapidly go. Another website is only a mouse click away.
Images Credit: Unsplash
