Is Your Website Toxic?

Apr 10, 2016

A badly designed website can be the downfall of an otherwise good company. That’s why our experts at our Dallas website design company want to ask you: Is your website toxic?

At the very least, a bad website design can turn off prospective visitors, resulting in a higher bounce rate. At worst, it can cost you irreparable losses, both in revenue and reputation. Either way, you don’t want your business to be a casualty of a website that’ll poison your chances of success.

This week we’re offering you a checklist of web design issues, so you can see whether or not your website is helping or hurting your enterprise — and what we can do about it. Take a good look at the list below and see how many of these are present in your website.

Overall Design

  • Not mobile responsive
  • Sideways scrolling
  • Distracting navigation buttons
  • Cluttered or messy elements
  • No focal point / Too many focal points
  • Design for design’s sake, not design for function
  • Lack of contrast (text, color, graphics)
  • No venue for visitor feedback (comments, email, contact numbers)
  • Visitor feedback sections are hard to find
  • Key information that’s hard to find

    • Layout

  • Too much space
  • Too cluttered
  • Messy layout
  • Overall layout not cohesive with the website’s theme

    • Graphics

  • Glittery and blinking elements
  • Low-quality graphics
  • Irrelevant graphics
  • Outdated graphics, such as glitter
  • Excessive or missing graphics
  • Overused ‘standard’ free stock photos, images, or illustrations
  • Excessively bold or clashing color combinations
  • Backgrounds / font colors that make text content unreadable

    • Text

  • Important information buried in text
  • Irrelevant information, slogans, or keywords
  • Large blocks of text content
  • Unreadable text – text placed over graphics, font colors that blend into the background
  • Too-small fonts
  • Trendy, easily dated, or outdated fonts (think Comic Sans or Papyrus)
  • Too many fonts and font styles, sizes, and colors
  • Unreadable fonts

    • Navigation

  • Complicated navigation
  • Orphan pages (no ‘back’ buttons)
  • Overly minimalist navigation that doesn’t identify where each button or link leads to
  • Disorganized menu elements
  • Unlabeled graphic elements that require the visitor to mouse over each element to identify them
  • Excessive or unnecessary navigation effects
  • Pages that don’t indicate where you are on the site
  • Missing pages

    • Features and Functions

  • Slow page loading time
  • Counterinuitive links (dead links, links placed in confusing areas, unclear anchor text, too many links, zero links, links to irrelevant pages, links that aren’t underlined or highlighted)
  • Unnecessary effects and features
  • Animation overkill
  • Animation or effects that slow down page loading time
  • Animation, features, or effects that disrupt visual flow (ex. fading elements that cause text to be unreadable)

    • Extras

  • URL doesn’t bear any relation at all to the website’s name
  • Inappropriate URL
  • Use of Flash
  • Counters
  • Frame scroll bars inside the page
  • Too many ads
  • Ads that are unrelated to the website’s theme
  • Music and videos on autoplay once the site is opened
  • Lack of social media channels
  • Dead social media links

    • How did your site measure up?

    It often takes only one or two of these issues to automatically turn off a potential customer. Usually, when visitors come to your site they already know what they want to look for. But if one or two key elements spoil their browsing experience, it’s very easy for them to take their business elsewhere.

    That’s what we’re here for: to help ensure that your visitors stay on your site long enough to convert into your loyal customers. It always starts with a great web design.

    Are you ready for a website detox? Contact our Dallas web design team today so we can share ideas on the best way to rebuild your website for success!

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