Five UX Horror Stories
Imagine yourself surfing on the Internet to find the perfect present for your loved ones. You click on another ad and end up on an e-commerce website that looks so bad you can barely finish the purchase. Can you relate? Then follow me in my imaginary Horror UX mobile journey. I’ll focus on the 5 scariest things in UX design that should be forgotten forever!
- No room for Mobile Friendliness
My hands are cold as I enter the website that hardly fits a mobile screen. Why does it look so horrible? I know the answer. Poor UX makes me leave and never come back.
From applications to websites, user experience is essential for a business’s success online. Low usability is the number one reason that online companies fail. If a website isn’t mobile-friendly, 50% of users will use it less, even though they may like the business itself.
2. Creepy font size
We’ve all read this. Huge titles and tiny body text, gigantic supportive text size, and informational text so small that it may only be read with a magnifier.
Two main guidelines we designers follow suggest using 16 px (Material Design) and 17 px (iOS Guidelines) for body text on mobile devices. Tiny text and small functional elements increase the number of incorrect inputs and make interaction with a product less smooth.
3. Disturbing Colors
Random-colored websites, ugly patterns on the background, and bold colors make eye pressure go up. Thankfully, most of these web masterpieces are now buried in the past. Minimalism is still trendy, with its clear and airy layouts. And sometimes this causes a problem.
In today’s world, design accessibility is a must, so it is important to adapt interfaces to users of all ages and accessibilities. I’d like to focus on color contrast accessibility, as it is a common issue of minimalistic web interfaces.
Soft-colored text (such as light gray) might look good aesthetically, but users probably will struggle to read it as low color contrast makes the text hard to see. Don’t forget that we often use our mobile devices in a hurry or maybe while walking, and proper contrast can make elements more visible and reachable. It never hurts to check the contrast between background and text with tools like WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker.
4. Unclear Messaging
I’m on a home page. I skim the text and am ready to take an action. Hmmm, where do I have to click? Oh, found it. Wait, why does this button say “Read more” instead of “Buy now”?
The main purpose of call-to-actions (CTAs) is to lead a customer to a purchasing decision through a single button. On some websites the main CTA buttons do not stand out enough: The color of the CTA button is often too light, and so is the font. The text on the buttons should be short and easily understandable. CTAs should stand out to make it clear to the user what they should do next to finish the purchase.
5. No Guest Checkout
All right, I’m almost done shopping in my imaginary virtual store. I added all my details on checkout (it was tough due to an impressive number of form fields) and press the confirmation button. “Sign up to Finish”? Oh, no, please, don’t do this to me!
Research from Baymard Institute claims that 69.8% of online shopping carts are abandoned. Forced registration leads to high abandonment rates. The ‘Guest Checkout’ was originally created as a solution to a problem connected to a user experience.
A great solution from the UX perspective: Allowing users to save their customer details for the next time after a purchase is made. The benefits of saving details after the transaction should be clearly identified. This solution implies convenience and shows users that their experience is the brand’s primary focus. Sounds reasonable to apply it, right?
I wrote this story just for fun being inspired by User Interface and terrifying UX House of Horrors — visit if you dare.
What are your worst UX horror stories? Let me know in the comments!
