Can your website be saved?

There are several blind spots in website design. There are several mistakes that are routinely made web architecture. The reasons they are made are many. Honest oversights. Budget limitations. Template-based websites. And so on.

But, thankfully, every one of these blunders can be corrected on the backend of the process. All it takes is a lot of time, money, delays and profuse apologies. Or you can catch them on the front end and look like a hero.

Here are a few mistakes we frequently see:

Lousy navigation
Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. Never let cool and different ease out intuitive and user-friendly in web design. There is a reason that Detroit keeps putting the steering wheel on the left side of the dash each and every year. It just makes life easier.

No search function
The cool thing about the Worldwide Web is that it is like this big, giant archive. So take advantage of that on your site. Make sure a search field is on every single webpage. Don’t have it? No worries. You can add a search function to an existing site without having to write a lot of complex code or needing to learn Jedi mind tricks. Check out Google Custom Search. That quick, that easy.

Bad content organization
Web content should be bite-size and keyword rich. Never plop down a huge block of text onto a page. Use headlines and sub heads to break it up and make it user-friendly. Plus, remember the story of the camel. Commitees are famously lousy organizers. Your site map should make good logical sense. Don’t let it degenerate in to a group think land grab. Most importantly, remember, SEO. Optimize your content for the searchbots. One day, they will become our Overlords.

Poor legibility
Not everybody has the eyesight of a twenty-three-year-old web developer. Pick clean, readability fonts. Provide tons of white space and lots of photos for eye-relief.

Poor interface design
Pages on your website should be consistent without feeling monotonous. But be careful. Too much variation in your pages can start to create navigation confusion and a lack of brand consistency. As a rule, never change color schemes from page to page. Let every page embrace the brand color palette.

PC incompatibility
Web designers typically create their website designs on a Mac. Consequently, their creations often look great on a Mac and like roadkill on a PC. Test drive your font choice, color palette, etc. before you committing to a look.

Big screen bias
These days, the best sites are being designed to work as well on an iPhone® as they do on a Dell® laptop. The reason is obvious. Some folks are starting to surf the web on their mobile devices nearly as often as on their desktop computers. Consequently, you should consider how well your site is going to perform on the small screen as it how it looks on the big ones.

So now you have a heads up. The more of these things you consider on the front end of your site development, the better the result on the backend.