Happy Halloween!
You know what’s even scarier than ghosts, ghouls, and zombies?
That’s right – a poorly designed website.
Confusing navigation, lack of calls to action, and too many pop-ups can have potential customers running for the door faster than a grown adult seeing twin girls in a hallway speaking in unison. Here’s the spooky web design issues you should avoid:
1. Confusing Navigation
If your potential customers don’t know where to go to find what they need once they land on your business page, they’ll hit the back arrow faster than a masked sociopath chasing a teen girl (who somehow always trips when being chased – make it make sense!?).
Navigation on your site should be simple. As fun as it is to have creative menus or lots of dropdowns, sticking to standard navigation rules can help customers find things easier, faster, and can help you avoid a dreaded high bounce rate.
Stick to the basics; The logo in your header should lead to your home page. Pages in your main menu should use simple descriptive language. If you require dropdown menus for lots of pages, order them in a way that feels natural to the end-user.
Simple navigation means customers can find what they’re looking for easier and are more likely to buy from you! Check out our article on the important elements of quality web design to learn more about what’s important when building a new webite.
2. Lack of Calls to Action
So you’ve gotten some traffic to your site – that’s great! But how do potential customers know what to do when they get there? On top of having great page structure and navigation, using Calls to Action can help guide them to what they need.
Calls to Action can be in your headers or in your buttons, but they have to be somewhere, letting customers know what to do next – whether that’s requesting a consultation, shopping for your products, or getting a quote.
Calls to Action should never have non-descript verbiage if you want them to be effective. Avoid generic buttons (i.e. ‘Click Here’) like villains in movies somehow always avoid death the first time they fall unconscious (rule #2 – double-tap).
3. Too Many Pop-Ups
How many times have you gone to click on something to delve deeper into a website and seen pop-up after pop-up? Join our email list! Subscribe to our newsletter! Check out our latest sale! This is the mother of all spooky web design issues.
As a self-proclaimed scary movie hater, I find excessive pop-ups about as useful as jump scares. Sure, sometimes it’s fun to be startled, but certainly not when you’re looking for an answer to a question or for a specific item to buy. If anything, they get in the way and they definitely don’t encourage opt-ins.
Instead, choose your pop-ups carefully! Use modern pop-ups that display in the corners of the screen. If you absolutely must use a full-screen pop-up, make sure it’s easy to close and doesn’t trigger every five seconds.
Spooky Web Design Issues Will Scare Clients
Poor user experience will lose you clients and customers. That’s why avoiding these spooky web design issues will be the smartest decision you could make for your online brand – unlike the very not-smart decisions that every family of mom, dad, and 2.5 kids seems to make when moving into a large gloomy Victorian-looking house in a creepy town where everyone looks suspicious.
