A website designer has several components to take care of including the text that the audience would read, the graphics, pictures, and videos that they would see, and other features that they would use on the site. A good graphic design program can bring all of that together in a way that is not only easy on the eye for the viewer but also manages to achieve the goals of the website. High-grade graphics are an essential part of any website’s search engine optimization plans, and it can ensure that the rankings stay on the higher side. However, several sites commit elementary errors in their graphic designing efforts, which dumps much effort down the drain. Let us discuss a few of these errors, and how you can overcome them.

Overdoing design 

The primary objective of a website is to share information with the users and encourage them to ask questions, share ideas, make inquiries or even transactions. However, if the design elements of the landing page or other pages of a website confuse the core message, it can get a bit distracting for the visitor. Things should also not be overwhelming, which means the site should not be too colorful or too flashy, and there should not be too much going on inside the page. The purpose of graphic design is to make the page look attractive, not to throw everything you have at it. Keeping it simple does not have to mean making it dull. You can achieve a lot without creating a sensory overload for the visitors to the site, and a balance needs to be struck depending on the purpose and target audience of the website.

Being miserly

Another common mistake is that graphic designers often go overboard with pinching pennies by going only for free stuff like free pictures, for example. They say the lemonade would taste just as sweet as the amount of sugar put in it, so you cannot expect your website to look good if you use low-quality and free pictures only. Also, if you buy some of the images that will be used, you will appreciate that there is a reason those photographs are demanding a price and getting it, and that is not just the picture quality. Those photographs will have an element of uniqueness and exclusivity which will serve your website well.

Not realizing the limitations of amateur software

For every element of graphic design, the internet is overflowing with amateur resources which are yours for free. These online resources would help you in designing several pictorial or video elements which can be used on a website. However, they are not the professional agencies that would use the industry standard vector for their work, and this difference would be apparent in the quality of your website. The professional software might cost a bit, but the difference in quality and dependability would be noticeable.

Following trends blindly

Graphic designing is a field which is seeing several advances at a very rapid pace. While keeping on top of trends is essential, it is vital that a good design be timeless and not just trendy. Chopping and changing graphic design parameters just to keep up with trends might take the focus away from the core purpose of the website, and result in an end product that is far removed from what the site originally intended to be.

Missing industry standards

Every website has a specific purpose, and other sites with a similar goal would have learned the hard way what works and what does not. It depends a lot on what industry the client company belongs to. For instance, a website selling fashion clothing would be very different in its design layout from a site that is devoted to health and wellness. Just because a particular animation looks smart on one website does not mean it should look good on yours. That is why it is necessary to look at the good and bad design features of other sites in the same industry and learn from them.

Not giving space to the visitor

Less can often be more for a website, and this point cannot be emphasized enough. Text content is essential for a site, but piling loads of text into one page, and then filling the rest of the page up with distracting visuals would not leave the visitor with enough time to process all that information. A website with some blank spaces need not always look incomplete. It is usually soothing to the eye and could draw focus on the text and graphics that the page contains. Rather than cramming all information on the landing page, it is better to create the wireframe of the website in such a way that the data can be evenly spaced out between different pages.

Ignoring call to action 

You cannot consider your website as an internet-enabled brochure, which is only used to disseminate information to the visitor. A useful site would be one that would have a specific call to action which can encourage the visitor to respond to the website’s message in some way – maybe a transaction, or at least navigation to another section of the site, or a repeat visit, or a filled up form. The design of the website should be done in a way that this interactive response is encouraged instead of filling up each page with one way information flow only.

Missing optimization goals

Too many graphic designers get caught up in making the website look neat but do not devote enough attention to ensuring that the webpage has adequate SEO capabilities. According to Miami SEO KottonGrammer, a charming site is of no use if it does not get a good ranking on search engine results pages. On the other hand, an excellent graphic designer would have the capability of using design elements that would boost the website’s ranking by the correct use of keywords, cross-links, and other useful techniques.