Top 6 Most Common UX Mistakes

User experience or UX is extremely important for the proper functioning of your website. It is also essential for your audience to feel comfortable when visiting your website. Here are the top six most common UX mistakes you might be making and how to avoid them.

1. Doing Everything (and Nothing)

When creating a design for your website, you will obviously want it to look great. Maybe you are trying to make it appear modern or maybe you want it to be funkier. But whatever direction you choose to take with your website design, you need to remember that you should have some kind of orienteer to follow with everything you do.

There will be certain trends that will make you want to include specific elements into your design, but it is fundamental that you think them through before using them. After all, various trends come and go, so you might end up with an outdated design only after a few months or even in a matter of weeks.

Nevertheless, there are some things that are timeless. If you use a menu with tabs for your pages, you can be sure that it will be used even in five or ten years because it is an essential part of any website. Yet you should keep in mind that using everything all at once can be as harmful as not using any trendy stuff at all.

If you use all kinds of widgets at the same time, your design might become very crowded. If you don’t use any widgets at all, it might look empty and unoriginal. The key here is to find that golden middle ground and use just enough unique elements or widgets that will make your design stand out and your UX engaging.

2. Choosing Aesthetics Over Functionality

Another extremely important element of a great website design that keeps in mind user experience is the functionality of your website. Aesthetically, your site might look absolutely stunning, but if it can’t be used properly and your customers are unhappy, then there is no point in all of the good looks.

You need to stop choosing aesthetics over functionality and focus on the performance rather than the visuals. The overall experience your site visitors get will be significantly influenced by this decision, so you should carefully consider whether or not you are willing to make some sacrifices in favor of other crucial aspects of your website.

Functionality is directly connected to the UX of your website and includes everything from social media sharing buttons to the newsletter subscription button. It’s about the options your site visitors get and the things they can do there. This is why every process must run smoothly and evenly so your customers are satisfied.

Though you will be focusing on functionality, it doesn’t mean that you should forget about aesthetics. Your website design can still look amazing. In fact, it is crucial that it looks great no matter what. A good theme for your website will do the job for you, but if you have enough experience or know someone who does, they can build some elements for your site.

3. Aiming It at Search Engines

This mistake is made not only when website owners work with UX but also when they work with the content for their website. Aiming all of it at search engines rather than making it for the readers is an awful mistake and will ultimately lead to negative rather than positive consequences.

UX which is made solely for search engines not only looks bad but also works badly. You will probably forget about functionality at this point, so you will need to find ways to make it more suitable for your audience instead. After all, your customers are always right.

For example, if you want to make your website design more appropriate for foreign audiences, you will need to translate it with the help of an online translation service like The Word Point. This is because human translations are more valued both by regular site visitors and by search engines. Automatic translations, on the other hand, usually sound gibberish.

Likewise, you need to do a similar thing with every other aspect of your user experience. Do you want your website visitors to be satisfied? Do you want your functionality and aesthetic to work even after you do everything for the search engines? Then you should find a balance that will take into account every single aspect of your business.

4. Underestimating Responsive Design

Responsive design has long become a standard rather than a stylish trend that some businesses follow. By this point, responsive design is essential for your website to function properly. This is exactly why you should stop underestimating responsive design.

Firstly, it will improve functionality. With this, your site visitors will enjoy your website. In addition, your buttons, widgets, and other elements will be working much better which will increase the engagement on your website and its overall performance.

Secondly, it will help your website look better. When somebody visits your site from their smartphone, your design will immediately adjust to the size of the screen. When somebody visits it from their desktop, they will see the desktop version. Such logic works for any kind of screen of every device used to access your website.

Thirdly, it will improve the overall quality of your user experience. The superior functionality and a better look combined with the flexible design that adjusts to the visitor’s screen size all come together to make your UX one of the best ones among modern websites.

In other words, everything you do with your design should make it responsive in the end so that it can influence your UX in a good way. Never ignore the advantages of the latest achievements in web design as well as the proven tactics that are used by thousands if not by millions.

5. Outsourcing Every Task

Outsourcing every task involved in developing UX or even letting others do everything when you can do it instead is not the best idea. In fact, it is a terrible idea if you want everything to be done correctly and before the deadline is long past.

Of course, outsourcing has its own benefits. It can save you a lot of time and you can even save some money if you find good workers for a fairly low price (freelancers mostly). However, if you use outsourcing too much or too often, it will ultimately lead to a bad result.

This means that you need to limit the amount of outsourcing you get involved with while working on your UX. You can outsource some tasks but try to keep the most important ones within your company and let your dedicated teams work on them instead of someone you don’t know.

Try to manage your UX-related tasks smartly. Think of the details that are not very complicated and can be done even by workers with less experience. These are the ones that you can outsource. On the other hand, there are tasks that require a lot of planning and need you to dedicate your own time to get them done. Never outsource them.

In other words, you need to organize all of your processes in a way that will ensure that everything is done with the highest quality of the end product in mind. Just like with other things mentioned earlier in the article, your aim is to find the golden middle ground that will provide you with a win-win situation that you will be able to profit from.

6. Overlooking Your Content

Last but not least, don’t underestimate the power of content when it comes to user experience. As mentioned earlier, it is very important to create content for your audience rather than for the search engines. Your content should complement your UX and they should both work for the benefit of each other. In fact, a good content strategy goes a long way.

Some things you could do with your content to improve your user experience is using relevant keywords, work on your grammar and spelling, pay attention to quality, and so many other things. Consider recycling your old content while also creating evergreen and trending content. In other words, be relevant to your audience.

Try to stick to some kind of posting schedule and create a set of content guidelines for yourself to follow. You can also create landing pages to boost the conversions, but always remember that your content needs to guide your audience through the sales funnel. If you manage to do everything correctly, you will realize how much your UX has improved.

Final Thoughts

All in all, user experience is an integral aspect of your website. If you stop making the mistakes listed in this article and start using the advice from it, you will notice how your UX has significantly improved with time and effort put into it.

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