Every good thing does come to an end. This could not be more true when we are discussing ‘Website Design’. The trends in small business Website Design come and go; while some do stick around for a little longer than others they too do eventually come to an end as well. I guess that is why it is called a website design trend in the first place.

There are several techniques that you are still using but may not be effective and some of them may even be causing harm. However here are the top 5 that is almost certainly bad for your firm.

Home Page Slider:

The use of the Home Page Slider had peaked in the year 2009 when a carousel (slider) on the home page was viewed as an essential navigation tool. The way designs and firms alike views it was a means to display more information without having the user navigate deep into the website as well as to highlight the main or current products or services. Hence the home page slider began to be used by corporates as an information slider to showcase how their services have the edge. It also became popular with blog-style websites where the recent or feature blog images and information were displayed in the slider.

Come to think of it, the home page slider has the ability to provide lots of current information on the home page itself. The fact of the matter is that they do not convert very well. As we bring our Web design ideas into the year 2015, we need to stop and consider what the world was like in 2009 and how it is now and what can we expect in the future.

The facts of the matter are sider is growing in size as our websites layouts too get larger. A slider usually will have at least 5 images and is located first thing on the top of the page. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a slider will cause your website to load slower. Besides which as per the statistics gathered recently a slider does not provide you enough of a conversion (clicks) to justify itself either. As we move towards the mobile platform you will know if you have ever viewed a slider on mobile that usually does not make sense. A slider is responsive in design however content is rarely ever so.

There are many alternatives to a slider, maybe even a simple banner would suffice. I can find many advantages of doing so just at the top of my head like faster load times, easier for the mobile users, quicker navigation for the few how did stop to view each slide.

Keyword Focused SEO Copy writing:

Excessive use of keywords on a website is a thing of the past. Many have started to realize this thanks to how Google operates. The reason is that Google will now penalize content that is mainly keyword focused. But that is not the only reason it is bad. Stop and think about the visitor to your website; your excessive use of keywords might bring him to your website faster (in the past) but what good is that if he doesn’t see a good quality or useful content.

Hence when it comes to either the content of the website, the website titles or meta making excessive use of keywords will not get you places. Those who are stuck over how keyword density was big; it is a thing of the past now and it is something you need to get over fast.

Slow or irreverent Introductions:

Let face it the cool flash introductions that many websites had in the past showcase a lot of creativity of the designers and some of them were even a novelty to watch. But things have changed; flash has changed and the introductions have changed too. In general, the priorities have changed.

There are several websites that are developed with an introduction of some sort. It is either a flash introduction or an image of some kind or by posting some information or update. In general, however, the trend has been to drop the introductions and get right to the point with the website.

The main reason is that the introductions cause a small delay and an extra page to read before getting to what one really after. Besides which a flash page will usually take a longer time to load.

However, it often happens that a client insists that a web designer place a long introduction of some kind and may usually the designer to decide which technology to use. It is necessary to persuade the client into understanding that such introductions are thing of the past. Besides which the fact is that as we enter the year 2015 the number of mobile users is expected to rise even faster. And there can be nothing worse than to wait for a long introduction on a mobile. In fact, it will most likely mean a loss of traffic.

Complex Designs:

When it comes to the complexity of the design, many designers get carried away in creating the perfect theme and hence what they end up with is fabulous but a bit complicated for the average visitor. Your website should have a mobile-friendly design and responsive design to increase the user experience and eventually decrease the bounce rate. There are visitors who do appreciate such detailed and complex designs but you will find that a larger number of visitors will simply refuse to spend a long time on one single website. This is more true as we step into 2015. The statistics published recently clearly show an increase in the number of mobile internet users and it is likely to surpass the PC users soon.

When it comes to mobile users; the best way forward is to keep it simple. The more complicated you make it, the longer it will take to load. Besides which complicated designs are also harder and time-consuming to navigate.

The same theory extends to forms as well. Just like the pages, the forms should also be kept as simple as possible.

Fonts:

The number of fonts available to use for your website has increased and hence many designers make use of fancy fonts. When it comes to using alternative fonts there are several options for you to consider however it is necessary to keep in mind that linking to external websites (for CSS or JavaScript) to get the right font will slow down your website. It is always faster to load from the same server than it is to load from a link on some remote server.

Besides which it is fine to change the style of the font and colour too, however, it is advisable to keep the font family the same. For example, if you have chosen Ariel on the first page then it is a good idea to use Ariel for the rest of the website as well.

Good Designs By Alakmalak

Alakmalak is a firm that is known to always follow good practices and has been in this field for a long while. They have developed more than 2000+ websites for clients all around the world (Exclusive Portfolio For Alakmalak Here.) to know what works.

• 5 Web design trends that will cause certain failure
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