10 web design mistakes that will kill user engagement

Your busi­ness’s web­site is your online store­front. It’s where cus­tomers meet your com­pa­ny for the first time, browse your prod­ucts, and learn about your brand. Giv­en this, it’s essen­tial that your web design is usable, enjoy­able, and helps would-be cus­tomers to com­plete their desired journeys.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, so many web­sites are dif­fi­cult to use, hard to nav­i­gate, and annoy­ing to browse through. There are sev­er­al things that web­site own­ers typ­i­cal­ly over­look that can result in low user engage­ment, and we’ll explore them in this article.

If you find you’re guilty of any of the fol­low­ing issues, make sure you speak with an expe­ri­enced web design­er to rec­ti­fy them.

So, let’s dive into the top 10 web design mis­takes that will kill user engagement:

1. Slow site loading times

Before vis­i­tors get to expe­ri­ence your web­site, they may encounter the prob­lem of slow load­ing time. As such, this issue should be dealt with first, secur­ing the high­est num­ber of visitors.

The impor­tance of site load­ing speed can­not be underestimated:

• 25% of web­site vis­i­tors will aban­don a site if it takes more than four sec­onds to load.
• Web­pages on Google’s first page have an aver­age load­ing time of 1.65 seconds.

Web design­ers can improve load­ing times by opti­mis­ing images and oth­er media, mini­fy­ing CSS and JavaScript files, util­is­ing caching tech­niques, and choos­ing a reli­able and fast host­ing provider.

2. Unclear navigation

When web­site vis­i­tors can’t find what they’re look­ing for, it increas­es their frus­tra­tion and, there­fore, the like­li­hood they’ll bounce off of your site. This can occur when nav­i­ga­tion menus are unclear or com­plex or even if nav­i­ga­tion is hidden.

Web­sites can suf­fer from this prob­lem even when the design appears to be high­ly mod­ern and styl­ish because they’ve been over­ly min­i­malised. So, don’t make the mis­take of think­ing only old­er web­sites can have poor navigation.

Although min­i­mal­ism in web design can look very appeal­ing, users still need clear sign­posts for com­plet­ing their desired journeys.

Clear and intu­itive nav­i­ga­tion can be achieved by organ­is­ing the menu log­i­cal­ly, using descrip­tive labels, pro­vid­ing a search func­tion, and imple­ment­ing bread­crumbs or con­tex­tu­al nav­i­ga­tion to help users under­stand their loca­tion with­in the site.

3. Lack of mobile friendliness

Mobile opti­mi­sa­tion is extreme­ly impor­tant. Of all the top-ranked sites on Google, 80% are opti­mised for mobile, which strong­ly indi­cates Google’s pref­er­ence on the matter.

But it’s not all about SEO. 61% of users will nev­er return to a web­site that’s not mobile adap­tive, result­ing in low engage­ment rates for sites that haven’t con­sid­ered mobile users.

You can help mobile opti­mi­sa­tion by ensur­ing your web­site can adapt seam­less­ly to dif­fer­ent screen sizes and devices and using flex­i­ble lay­outs, opti­mised images, and employ­ing CSS media queries.

4. Cluttered design

Over­whelm­ing users with too much infor­ma­tion, exces­sive ads, or dis­tract­ing ele­ments can hin­der user engage­ment as it makes it dif­fi­cult to focus on one sin­gle thing.

The main cul­prit for this is a lack of visu­al hier­ar­chy. This is how infor­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed to site vis­i­tors, guid­ing them to where they should direct their atten­tion. Cre­at­ed by colour, con­trast, scale, and group­ing, visu­al hier­ar­chy needs to be well-organ­ised so that users aren’t over­whelmed and miss key information.

Visu­al hier­ar­chy can help CTAs stand out, which should be top-of-mind when design­ing web­sites. Make sure your CTAs are made clear through the use of colour, font, or size and make web­pages ded­i­cat­ed to a sin­gle pur­pose rather than multiple.

5. Inaccessible content

Long para­graphs with­out prop­er for­mat­ting make it chal­leng­ing for users to read the con­tent on your site. Make sure you’re using things such as head­ings, sub­head­ings, bul­let points, and white space to make read­ing easier.

Oth­er­wise, users won’t notice all the val­ue you can offer and may go to a com­peti­tor’s site instead.

Acces­si­bil­i­ty is also about cater­ing to web­site vis­i­tors with dis­abil­i­ties. Since 15% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion lives with a dis­abil­i­ty that affects their abil­i­ty to use the inter­net, busi­ness­es need to pay atten­tion to this demographic.

Ignor­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty guide­lines can exclude these users from access­ing and engag­ing with web­sites. So, web design­ers should ensure they’re con­sid­er­ing all pos­si­ble acces­si­bil­i­ty features.

Web design­ers can improve acces­si­bil­i­ty by adher­ing to web con­tent acces­si­bil­i­ty guide­lines (WCAG), ensur­ing prop­er head­ing struc­ture, pro­vid­ing alter­na­tive text for images, imple­ment­ing key­board nav­i­ga­tion sup­port, and con­duct­ing reg­u­lar acces­si­bil­i­ty audits.

You can learn more about web­site acces­si­bil­i­ty from our arti­cle here.

6. Hidden information

Fail­ing to pro­vide clear and eas­i­ly acces­si­ble con­tact infor­ma­tion can frus­trate users who want to get in touch or seek support.

If users can­not find the infor­ma­tion they are seek­ing or if the con­tent is poor­ly organ­ised and dif­fi­cult to under­stand, they may become frus­trat­ed and leave.

Design­ers should ensure that essen­tial infor­ma­tion is promi­nent­ly dis­played, such as con­tact details, impor­tant announce­ments, or key prod­uct or ser­vice fea­tures. Using visu­al­ly promi­nent ele­ments, strate­gic place­ment, and con­cise mes­sag­ing can help high­light crit­i­cal information.

7. Unresolved technical issues

Web­sites that expe­ri­ence fre­quent down­time, errors, or oth­er tech­ni­cal issues can quick­ly frus­trate users who expect a seam­less brows­ing expe­ri­ence, lead­ing them to leave and search for more reli­able alternatives.

Encoun­ter­ing bro­ken links is one thing, but if they’re han­dled bad­ly, users can become even more frus­trat­ed. For instance, not pro­vid­ing clear error mes­sages or redi­rects for bro­ken links or 404 pages can lead to user frus­tra­tion and abandonment.

Reg­u­lar test­ing and main­te­nance are cru­cial to iden­ti­fy and fix tech­ni­cal issues prompt­ly. Web design­ers should mon­i­tor serv­er per­for­mance, update plu­g­ins and soft­ware, con­duct cross-brows­er test­ing, and imple­ment error han­dling to min­imise tech­ni­cal problems.

8. Lengthy sign-up or checkout processes

When users just want to com­plete a quick pur­chase or sign up for a newslet­ter, the last thing they want is to spend an extra 10+ min­utes fill­ing in forms. After high costs, the most com­mon rea­son for cart aban­don­ment is web­sites ask­ing users to make an account.

Web­site own­ers need to be mind­ful of this because lengthy sign-up or check­out process­es can be the dif­fer­ence between a pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive user engage­ment rate.

With 17% of aban­doned carts due to long and com­pli­cat­ed check­out process­es, busi­ness­es can eas­i­ly reduce this fig­ure by sim­pli­fy­ing user jour­neys through web design.

Sim­pli­fy­ing sign-up and check­out process­es can be achieved by min­imis­ing the num­ber of form fields, offer­ing social login options, imple­ment­ing progress indi­ca­tors, and pro­vid­ing clear instruc­tions at each step to enhance the user’s sense of progress and efficiency.

9. Too many distractions

A com­mon bar­ri­er to a pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence is a dis­tract­ing web­page. If users find your web­site to be over­ly hec­tic and jar­ring, they’re like­ly to bounce off and vis­it a com­peti­tor’s site. Dis­trac­tions pre­vent vis­i­tors from access­ing the infor­ma­tion they need and can even annoy them.

When design­ing your site, you should reduce the num­ber of pop-ups you have and also recon­sid­er any auto-play­ing media. Auto-play­ing videos, audio, or ads can annoy users and dis­rupt their brows­ing expe­ri­ence. Pro­vid­ing con­trol to the user over media play­back is crucial.

Pop-ups and auto-play­ing media are also key indi­ca­tors of an untrust­wor­thy site – an impres­sion you def­i­nite­ly don’t want to be giv­ing off.

So, make sure you lim­it the num­ber of ads on your pages and min­imise pop-ups. Always use white­space to sep­a­rate con­tent and ensure CTAs are visu­al­ly prominent.

10. Excessive use of Flash

Though Flash was ini­tial­ly inte­gral to the devel­op­ment of the inter­net, it’s no longer the opti­mal choice for mod­ern web­sites. It can even be detri­men­tal to your site’s SEO.

Fire­fox began the tran­si­tion away from Flash in 2011, after secu­ri­ty con­cerns, and com­plete­ly blocked it in 2021 with the release of Fire­fox ver­sion 85. Beyond secu­ri­ty, there are oth­er issues with Flash, such as slow load­ing times, lack of mobile usabil­i­ty, and the much bet­ter alter­na­tive of HTML5.

Plus, Flash pro­vides very poor usabil­i­ty. Xan­thos explains that “it can’t be searched, there’s no way to hit a back but­ton with­in Flash con­tent, […] and it’s impos­si­ble to nav­i­gate on a touch screen.”

Mov­ing away from Flash and adopt­ing mod­ern web tech­nolo­gies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript ensures com­pat­i­bil­i­ty across devices. Migrat­ing Flash-based ele­ments to HTML5 equiv­a­lents and lever­ag­ing respon­sive design prin­ci­ples can enhance the user expe­ri­ence, elim­i­nate Flash-relat­ed issues, and give your site’s SEO a boost.

Final thoughts

So, those are 10 web design mis­takes to avoid. If you want to learn more about opti­mis­ing your web­site’s design, you can check out more arti­cles on our blog.

Or, if you’d like some out­side help with your web­site’s design, our team at pur­ple­plan­et would love to help. Click the but­ton below to reach out or learn more about our services.

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