This blog will be discussing the top 5 mistakes that web designers make and how they can improve on them. Understandably, everyone makes mistakes. However, it's important to remember the mistakes that were made, so that you can improve on them and avoid them in the future.

When you hear the phrase poor legibility, it's referring to the content. Today, content is still king. Although there may be a lot of beautiful websites out there that feature mainly images, content is still what matters most. The written word will never die, and now that written word is written on a screen. You have to be able to see it, and without good legibility or readability, you defeat the whole purpose of having that website. One of the most common mistakes with legibility is bad contrast. For example, if your typography is too light compared to the background, it can be hard on the eyes. Another mistake with legibility is doing a dark background with light or white text and doing that in text blocks. Even though there is night reading mode, large text blocks are still not the best way to read things. 

A great way to improve your legibility is to enhance your color scheme and implement it better. Lastly, align and format the typography and bring some variation to the content that is on the page. You want to make sure you have an excellent mixture of headings, body copy, lists, and images. All of those variations will help break up the content and make it easier to digest. 

If something doesn't look or feel right, it's one of three things. The first one is that the design is not presenting the content well. Secondly, the content is jumbled, and it looks like it doesn't belong there. Thirdly, it may be a usability issue, and you need to rearrange things. With that said, those three things come into the organization of your content and your layout. 

To fix your messy layout, you can create white space in-between pieces of content. You can also strip out content. Most people tend to skim content rather than read it. Therefore, if you can water down your content to be more skimmable and add more emphasis to certain places, then you can make your content more engaging. 

When it comes to websites, the navigation needs to be easy. They can be experimental, unique, and different. However, there's a reason why most sites can form various application patterns because users are accustomed to those patterns. So, if you want to drift away from those patterns, you need to have a good reason to do it. Navigation to a website should be seamless, consistent, and easy for the person to get anywhere on your website at any time. If you're making more pages, that doesn't mean you have to make more dropdowns. If you're going to add more pages or menus, there has to be a purpose to it. 

Your navigation should be in the context of your website itself. So, the more personal your website is, the more experimental you can be with your navigation. However, if the company is more prominent, then the more problems that can arise if you decide to take the experimental path. 

There's a place to be intentionally inconsistent where you can innovate and break the rules. On the other hand, there still needs to be consistency when using UI patterns. Your buttons should resemble each other, and the navigation should resemble itself on every page. The more intentional your design is, the more complete your website will look overall. 

Use a point value system. For everything on a page, give it a point. If it's different, then give it a point. For example, if all the images on a page that have straight edges label them A, but if another image on that page has a rounded corner, label it B.

Although we live in a time where people love to see animations, it's important to use that sparingly. Every type of animation or interaction that you introduce on your site has its own character and its own experience. Therefore, you're creating a look and feel through animation and interaction, and if too much is happening on the page, then it can become a real problem. Instead, you should use those animations sparingly, and you should use them consistently. 

If you have made any of these mistakes, it's okay. Just make sure you learn from it. As a web designer, you're going to learn and grow, and you won't be able to do that without making some mistakes along the way. A web design by TOLS Multimedia will assure your business is represented properly.