Creating a website is one of the most effective ways to attract and engage a relevant audience. But designing one that's capable of doing that is easier said than done.
There are a number of challenges that you may face when designing a website that offers a seamless experience to its visitors.
You face a lot of roadblocks, especially when you have just gotten started and haven't had much experience working on complex websites.
To overcome these challenges, designers and developers need to work in close coordination to identify the problems and devise viable solutions.
Here are the five challenges you may face when designing a website:
1. Responsiveness
People have different preferences when accessing your website. So, assuming that they'll only do so through desktops may cause problems for you.
You need to consider different possibilities and strive to create a responsive website that offers a seamless experience irrespective of the device used to access it.
This will make it easier for you to engage the intended audience and generate quality leads for your sales funnel, as visitors can effortlessly access the required information.
Plus, it shows that you care about the preferences of your audience, which helps you cultivate lasting relationships with them.
Creating a responsive website is a bit easier these days. WordPress is a beginner-friendly platform that powers 43% of websites around the globe. Leveraging it, you can easily create a stellar website by using responsive themes.
Furthermore, leveraging flexible grids is the right call when designing a responsive website. Plus, using scalable vector images, considering button placement, and selecting the best-suited font may also help improve the user experience.
2. Functionality or Aesthetics
Maintaining the balance between the functionality of your website and its aesthetic appeal may be challenging. Focusing too much on one thing may compromise another and prevent you from engaging the target audience.
A common mistake many make is going overboard with the use of flashy text and over-the-top graphics. This may severely affect your website's functionality and your capability of capturing quality leads through it.
Remember, people visit your website to access relevant information and find answers to their questions. Your goal is to facilitate their access to the required information.
Choosing a minimalistic design for your website always helps. But if you prefer going a bit flashy, you should still focus on readability and information navigation by choosing the right font, being careful with the content layout, and presenting the solutions you offer intuitively.
You can make your website aesthetically appealing to get more eyeballs without having to compromise on the experience you offer. For that, you have to think things through and design your pages in a way that they best serve the purpose they were created for.
3. Load Time
Another common challenge that you may come across when creating a website is poor load time when visitors try to access the desired content.
This is a critical problem, as a 1-second delay can cause an 11% loss in page views and a 7% drop in potential conversions for a website.
If your pages take more time to load than expected, your visitors may exit the site and likely never return. You're not the only one operating in your respective industry. So, your audience may end up exploring other alternatives, and you lose your chance of engaging them.
You can overcome this challenge by embracing the balanced approach mentioned earlier. Focusing on aesthetics is important, but you can't let that cause load-time issues.
Optimizing the images that you use, leveraging caching, resolving JavaScript issues, cleaning your code, having a content delivery network, and using a reliable hosting service may also help when improving the load time of the website you create.
4. Optimal Use of White Space
An efficient use of white space when creating a website prevents you from offering a clunky user experience to your visitors.
Maintaining the right balance is the key here. If you use too much white space, it makes your pages unnecessarily long. As a result, visitors have to scroll a lot to navigate the required information, which can be an annoying experience.
On the other hand, if there's not enough white space, it may compromise the readability and end up confusing the visitors.
To overcome this issue, you have to be precise when it comes to leveraging white space. Taking inspiration from other websites may help, and you can test out different variations to see what works best for you.
5. Browser Compatibility
Another challenge you may encounter when creating a website is browser compatibility. As said earlier, people may have different preferences when it comes to accessing your platform.
Of course, this doesn't only apply to the device they choose to visit your site. They may also go with different browser alternatives to access the content they desire.
A common mistake many make is to optimize their websites for leading browsers like Google Chrome. But they forget that when accessed through a different browser, your website may end up offering a vastly different experience.
It's not just about the looks but also the way your website performs when accessed through browsers that are not mainstream or a popular choice among users.
You can overcome this challenge by leveraging media types that are compatible with all browsers. Plus, you should always test your website before the launch, ensuring that your platform offers a seamless experience for all visitors.
Final Words
There you have it: five common challenges beginners may face when designing a website. If you want to create a platform that offers a seamless user experience and enables you to effortlessly engage the intended audience, the recommendations in this article may come in handy.
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