Of course, this rapid evolution is driven by users – together, us ‘internet users’ are constantly growing more and more discerning of poor site design, expecting more out of the user experience, and redefining the very definition of slow – these days, for instance, the average internet user will wait one tenth of a second before deciding that a system is not working instantaneously. We can’t measure it ourselves, but we can definitely feel it.
At the same time, however, very few of us are overtly aware of the pressure we’re exerting on the internet as-a-whole to get better, more user friendly, faster, and far from the cupboard of pre-loved design features. Without that awareness, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees when it comes to your own website, so what’s holding it back?
Here are some of the features that represent dead giveaways when it comes to the age of a website, and why that site needs to find a web design team to rejuvenate it.
Long Load Times
Like we said in our introduction, the definition for long load times is constantly getting shorter and shorter. We’re an impatient generation, and it’s up to developers to meet those high expectations.
A slow loading site is a major giveaway of poor design. Not just that, but Google – as part of their Core Web Vitals initiative – and other search engines take page load speed into consideration when it comes to ranking search results.
Ask yourself: how long are you willing to wait? Page load times impact conversions, and each second counts. By the four-second mark, it’s likely you’ll start losing once-promising visitors, so don’t let this vital consideration fall by the wayside.
No Responsive or Adaptive Web Design
Cast your mind back 20 years to the day you brought home your first smartphone. Outside apps that had been designed for use on a phone screen, navigating the web wasn’t always a smooth experience. Sites that had only been designed and optimised for a full-size computer screen (navigated using a cursor, rather than a finger) looked impossibly small or mind-bogglingly jumbled on a 3.5-inch iPhone screen.
Then, developers started to embrace responsive or adaptive web designs, which meant that phone and tablet users could visit from a browser, navigate cleanly, and experience the site without all that friction.
Then again, every so often, we’ll come across a site that is still clinging to the age of PC-only visitors. It’s inconvenient, and you can bet it impacts conversions.
Again, this feature matters a lot for SEO. These days, Google is looking for sites to be prioritised for mobile, then for computer browsers. This is what they call mobile-first indexing.
Outdated Information
Whether you haven’t touched your site’s blog for a few months (or years) – a poor SEO move, if you’re interested in getting to the top of the SERP – or your homepage still features a bulletin for an ‘upcoming’ event in, say, June 2017, your site’s visitors are bound to notice and, rightfully so, to make a snap judgement about it.
It may seem like ‘just one of those things’, but it’s not a good look. And, as we mentioned above, it’ll be sure to harm your performance in relative results on Google and other search engines which, in turn, will reduce the number of organic hits you get on your site.
We’re not sure which is worse – visitors who conclude that your site hasn’t been touched for five years, or no visitors at all. Luckily, you can avoid both by keeping your info – blog posts, upcoming events, news stories – all up to date.
Too Much to Look at
In the early days of the internet, we all loved to take creative liberty to the nth degree and deploy every widget, font, image, animation, text box, etc. on our sites and social media profiles. Things were busy, hectic, cluttered – everything we don’t want today.
The tech world is always shedding the unnecessaries, and progress is almost always synonymous with streamlining, paring back, simplifying and making things sleeker. Industry leaders like Apple have set a high benchmark for that.
Now, you don’t want your website to look basic or empty. It shouldn’t feel like a home stripped of its fittings and furniture, but, instead, a beautifully, carefully appointed minimalist haven.
But what does that mean? It means, in the very least, not cramming everything onto the homepage – scaling back on the stock photos, simplifying the colour palette to 2-3 colours (unless you have a good reason not to), not providing multiple links to the same few pages, and ensuring navigation is made clear.
That brings us onto the troubles of…
Poor Navigation Paths
This one screams ‘cheap website’, and, even if your visitors are willing to forgive you for that, the frustration of trying to get around may well send them packing for good. It’s incredibly user unfriendly, so even the most undiscerning, undemanding of internet users could be deterred by this one.
Getting around a website should feel like second nature. As a result, the best-designed navigation paths will feel like very little thought needed to go into them because they will be simple and unobtrusive. The navigation menu should be clear and optimised for the number of pages on your site, without any unnecessary extras (for instance, a dedicated ‘Home’ button is generally considered redundant these days, since we’ve all grown accustomed to navigating via the site’s logo.
