Keep in mind that in a world of information overload, your website must grab your visitor’s attention. Make it an inviting door to your business by avoiding these common website design mistakes:
- Excessively large graphics that make download time slow.
- Too many animations that confuse and overwhelm a user.
- The Blink Tag. It’s annoying!
- “Under Construction” signs.
- Bad Color Choice. Choose colors that fit your audience.
- Grammatical Errors. The website speaks for your services – no one will hire you if you cannot spell!
- Text that is too small or too large.
- Horizontal scrollbars along the bottom of your website to view the right-hand side of your webpage. Users automatically know to scroll down on a website but scroll across too? This is inefficient from a usability standpoint.
- Audio clips that play automatically. No sounds are ideal as they increase download time, but if you absolutely must have music playing in the background, give the user the option to shut it off.
- Broken images. Square boxes with missing images? Very unprofessional.
- Broken links. Enough said.
- Too little blank space between sections. Give your reader some “white space” to rest their eyes!
- Overuse of UPPERCASE. This screams “yelling” at your user and is against netiquette (net etiquette).
- Having your website on a host that never seems to stay online. Choose a reliable host for your website that is online 24/7.
- Too many advertising banners!
- Slow servers or oversized pages because of un-optimized, large, graphics. Either one will send your user elsewhere. Patience for websites to download is scarce nowadays.
- No text navigation option. Always provide text navigation at the bottom of your website or a sitemap to help users find their way should they get lost at your website.
- Last but never least, remember to keep it simple!
Source: http://www.mediamage.com/website.htm