DIY Website Design Disasters, Mistakes to Avoid

Before deciding to hire a professional for web design and development, many businesses try the Do-It-Yourself route. Sometimes they get lucky. Other times the result goes beyond ugly. DIY website design can be a disaster in the making with dire consequences.

If you’ve been reading our blog, you’ve probably noticed we’re a big fan of WordPress. It’s a content management system that’s relatively easy to use. It also provides lots of flexibility, giving businesses room to grow and evolve website functionality. WordPress provides a stable framework to build a beautiful online presence. Even so, without an artful design hand, a WordPress site can still be ugly, uninviting and poor representation of a business.  So what are the common mistakes we see?

Poor User Experience

At the center of great website design is understanding user experience. How a visitor navigates through your site and consumes its information is both an art and science. Out-of-the-box templates or WordPress themes may be a good place to start, but it rarely fits all the needs of a business. For one, readability is a factor. How people scan content on the web is very different than how they read a magazine article. Many do-it-yourselfers don’t put themselves in the visitor’s shoes. Some factors that affect a website experience are:

• Choice of colors
• Use of images
• Font style
• No clear path of information and call to action

Browser Missteps

A well-designed site takes into consideration what users will see across multiple browsers versions including the top 4: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. No surprise, some users may use an out of date browser version. The point is, what you design may not be what your user will actually see. Poor DIY design can ultimately affect a website’s performance. You want a visitor to stay long enough on a page to consume your content, get their interest piqued and then convert into a qualified lead.

Flashy Distractions

We also don’t recommend flash or moving images on your home page. It distracts from your visitor from your primary Call to Action. Try a little experiment. Next time you’re on a site that has flash or a scrolling banner, notice your eye movements and what you click on (or not). Want to annoy a visitor even more? Then we suggest adding a slow-loading image and a splash page  to appears while it loads.

We’ve got a couple more examples of DIY website design mistakes up our sleeves. You’re cordially invited to come back for the finale.