Bad Web Design –Why it happens and how to avoid it

Website design is one of the most important aspects of successful web hosting for ecommerce and other commercial and non-commercial purposes. Yet this important function often suffers from low quality of website design, which ironically in some cases results from greater knowledge of the technical aspects of the job. Poor quality website design may occur due to several reasons including lack of awareness of commercial requirements by designers, and overuse of features that appear technically appealing but in fact divert attention from the main purpose of the site, and may even be outright annoying in some cases to the site’s visitors. It is important to be aware about what constitutes good website design from the point of view of commercial success of web hosting.

Tracing the causes of poor website design

One of the main causes of poor website design can be traced to over enthusiasm. Newcomers to website design, in particular, may find it difficult to resist the temptation to over employ some of the features available to them. Adding more images or animation to the home page may look great to the designer in terms of the effect that it creates. In actual practice the home page takes an unduly long time to load when burdened with all such frills. In some of the worst cases, the system may even crash from poorly written and executed scripts and Java applets. The end result is that instead being charmed by the variety entertainment, the visitor chooses to leave the site, and your web hosting loses a lot of its potential.

That brings us to an important question. What makes for a good website design?

Good and bad website designs

You may be tempted to ask at this stage whether it is a sin to make your site more attractive and forceful by using all the facilities that are available to the website designer. Not at all. If it were so, what is the purpose of providing all those facilities in the first place? However, they’re a bit like sugar; you cannot add too much of them in the hope that it will make your dish more tasty.

The ultimate test of website design is the way it functions, and the extent to which it is able to achieve its purpose. This fact should never be lost sight of. Subject to this, you should add other features that make the site more user-friendly, attractive and expressive.

A good website design should provide for a number of things including the following

• Speed: It is important that the speed is good, and each page loads fast enough, so that users don’t lose their patience, and leave your site.
• Easy navigation: The user should be able to find his or her way within your site and be able to navigate easily. If you a number of sites at random, you will easily understand what this means and why it is important.
• Message: You are conveying a message through your website. Maybe you want to highlight the special advantages that your product or service has. The website design should be such that the user is able to understand easily and fully what the site conveys
• Action: A visitor to your site should be able to take any action easily. If you are hosting an ecommerce site, the user should be able to select items and proceed to order them easily through simple and straightforward procedures. For example, ecommerce shopping carts have become a common feature of ecommerce sites, and you should take care to include all such normal facilities in your site. The visitor to your site should also be able easily undo an action and go back to an earlier status.

As you can see, it is very easy to give in to the temptation of making your website design attractive and technically appealing at the cost of user-friendliness. If you want the to realize the maximum benefits from web hosting, you should avoid such temptation and make your website design in such a manner as to facilitate clear communication and easy use.