First of all, let’s explain the jargon. UX is “User Experience” and UI is “User Interface”. Both are crucial to a well-designed website, but are significantly different. User expectations are higher than ever, so we, as web designers, need to strike the perfect balance between creativity and functionality – trying not to sacrifice too much of one for the other. Even small UI/UX mistakes can have a huge impact on user satisfaction, engagement, and conversion rates. So, to help you avoid these pitfalls, we’ve compiled a list of the most common UI/UX design mistakes we see regularly, along with some guidance on how you can avoid them…
1. Overcomplicating Navigation
The Mistake:
Complex or unclear navigation is one of the most common UX issues, and it frustrates users to no end. When users can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they’re likely to leave your site in favour of a competitor’s. Dropdown menus with too many options, hidden links, or inconsistent layouts are just a few culprits of poor navigation design.
The Solution:
Simplify your site’s navigation by focusing on clarity and intuitiveness. Organise content into well-defined categories and use straightforward labels for your menu items. Consider the “three-click rule”: users should be able to find any content on your website within three clicks. Implementing breadcrumbs and offering a search bar can also significantly improve navigation. Note: only offer a search bar on your website if you have enough content. Otherwise it’s taking up useful real estate and distracting your users.
2. Hiding or Obscuring Navigation
The Mistake:
One of the growing trends in recent years has been the use of hidden or “hamburger” menus, especially on desktop sites. While these menus can create a cleaner, more minimalist look, they often reduce discoverability and increase friction. Users may struggle to find important sections of your site, leading to frustration and reduced engagement. This is especially problematic for first-time visitors who are unfamiliar with your layout and content structure.
The Solution:
Avoid hiding key navigation elements, especially on desktop versions of your site. Make primary navigation menus clearly visible and easy to access at all times. If you must use a hamburger menu for mobile devices, ensure it’s easily recognisable and includes clear labels to guide users. On desktop, consider traditional horizontal navigation bars, which are intuitive and familiar to most users. The goal is to strike a balance between aesthetics and usability—prioritise function over form when it comes to navigation.
By making navigation straightforward and visible, you reduce user frustration and increase the likelihood that visitors will engage with more of your content.
3. Ignoring Mobile Users
The Mistake:
With mobile web traffic surpassing desktop, neglecting mobile users is a major error. Poor mobile design, such as unresponsive elements, tiny buttons, small text, or slow load times, can lead to high bounce rates and negatively affects your search engine rankings.
The Solution:
Adopt a mobile-first design approach. This means designing the mobile version of your website first and then adapting it for larger screens. Focus on touch-friendly buttons, simplified layouts, and fast-loading mobile pages. Test your site across different devices to ensure it offers a seamless experience on all screen sizes.
Even if you decide to design for desktop first, ensure you have thoroughly tested your mobile site before you launch it.
4. Overloading the User with Too Much Information
The Mistake:
A common error is overwhelming users with excessive content or features. Whether it’s bombarding them with pop-ups, crowding pages with too much text, or loading the homepage with too many calls-to-action (CTAs), this approach leads to decision fatigue and confusion.
The Solution:
Adopt a minimalist approach to design. Focus on the essentials: the core message, clear CTAs, and a clean visual hierarchy. Use whitespace to give your content room to breathe and guide the user’s eye naturally through the page. Break page content up into clear sections, so the user can decide for themselves what is important for them to read and what they can skip past. When considering additional features or information, ask yourself: does this add value to the user experience, or is it just clutter?
5. Poor Readability and Contrast Issues
The Mistake:
Typography and colour choices play a significant role in UI/UX design, yet they are often overlooked. Fonts that are too small or difficult to read, combined with low-contrast backgrounds, can strain the eyes and make your content hard to digest. This leads to higher bounce rates and decreased user engagement.
The Solution:
Prioritise readability by selecting clean, modern fonts with sufficient size (usually at least 16px for body text). Choose a colour palette that offers strong contrast between text and background. Use tools like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) contrast checker to ensure your text is readable by all users, including those with visual impairments.
6. Lack of Visual Feedback for User Actions
The Mistake:
Failing to provide visual or interactive feedback for user actions, such as clicking buttons or submitting forms, creates uncertainty. Users need to know when they’ve successfully performed an action, whether that’s making a purchase, sending a message, or navigating to another page.
The Solution:
Incorporate micro-interactions into your design. Micro-interactions are small, subtle animations or visual cues that indicate a user’s action has been received. This can be as simple as a button changing colour when clicked, a form highlighting errors in red, or a success message appearing after form submission. These interactions build user confidence and make your website feel more responsive and intuitive.
7. Not Prioritising Accessibility
The Mistake:
Web accessibility is no longer optional; it’s a necessity. Failing to design your site with accessibility in mind can exclude users with disabilities and affect your SEO. Common accessibility mistakes include missing alt text for images, lack of keyboard navigation support, and non-descriptive link text like “click here.”
The Solution:
Incorporate accessibility from the very beginning of your design process. Use alt text for all images, ensure that your site can be navigated using only a keyboard, and write descriptive link text. Follow the WCAG guidelines to make sure your site is accessible to all users, including those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities. Accessibility improvements not only make your site usable for everyone but also enhance SEO and overall user satisfaction.
8. Slow Load Times
The Mistake:
Slow load times can kill your user experience. Users expect websites to load quickly, and if they don’t, they’ll abandon the site. A delay of even a few seconds can drastically increase bounce rates and decrease conversions.
The Solution:
Optimise your site for speed by compressing images, minimising inline code (e.g., CSS and JavaScript), leveraging browser caching, and using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to serve content faster. Regularly test your site’s performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, and address any issues that slow download times.
Additionally, make sure you’ve got the right hosting. If you’re a UK company with customers in the UK, make sure your servers are UK based. Doing this should increase load times for visitors and will also help your SEO. There are lots of really cheap hosting companies out there. Don’t be tempted to go with the cheapest. Hosting is the same as any other product; you buy cheap, you get rubbish!
9. Inconsistent Design Elements
The Mistake:
Inconsistency in design, whether it’s through fonts, colours, or button styles, creates a disjointed user experience and weakens your brand identity. Users expect a cohesive look and feel as they navigate your site. Inconsistent design patterns can confuse them and make your site appear unprofessional.
The Solution:
Establish a design system or style guide that outlines the consistent use of fonts, colours, button styles, and other elements across your site. Stick to a limited colour palette and typography set, and ensure that your layout is uniform from page to page. This builds familiarity and trust with your users.
Avoiding these common UI/UX design mistakes is crucial to providing a seamless, enjoyable, and engaging user experience. By prioritising clarity, simplicity, accessibility, and responsiveness, you can ensure that your website not only looks great but functions beautifully across all devices and for all users.
At Cerebral Agency, we specialise in creating websites that enhance user experience and drive business results. If you’re in Sheffield and looking for a design partner to help you elevate your website, get in touch with us today. We’d love to help you create a site that avoids these mistakes and delights your users.