In 2016, one-size-fits-all is a concept that does not work in terms of website design. Is your website stuck with any of these three features not doing it any favors?
Design Elements that ‘Float’
Yes they look flashy and they are responsive in their design, but floating elements do not work on every type of website. If your website is information and content-driven, the last thing you want is a semi-transparent box containing links to your social media channels stalking visitors to your website and literally blocking what they are trying to read and interact with. Likewise, a tab asking visitors to sign up to a mailing list that does not leave until they do so only serves to annoy users who are not interested in doing this. The constant presence of this floating tab will only irritate website visitors as you are trying to force them to do something that they have no interest in doing – otherwise, they would have signed up to your mailing list already.
Hamburger Menus
When it comes to the mobile versions of websites, many utilize what is known as a ‘hamburger menu’ (so-called because its shape resembles a hamburger). When this icon is tapped on, it opens out into a menu containing some of the pages on your website that users can navigate to. This popular feature has been adopted well by the masses – but this reason alone doesn’t mean that your website requires its use. A cinema website for example may only need to display showing times, opening hours, and prices without the need for a hamburger menu. Adding one in would only serve to be in keeping with common practice, but this would not be a good fit for the cinema website. Do people really need to access pages such as ‘About Us’ and ‘Blog’ etc. when they are most likely using their mobile device to search for showing times?
Home Page Image Carousels
Because they are visual, eye-catching, and can convey multiple bites of information continuously in a single space; image carousels are a popular choice on website homepages. Yet their setup can place a drain on website loading times and as a result, can make the homepage sluggish at times. While being able to show multiple facets of information in one space may be beneficial to certain businesses, others who focus on a single core discipline would not require this. To put this into context, an online bookshop would have a repetitive image carousel of a book after book which is unwarranted, unnecessary, and self-explanatory.
At Ireland Website Design, we ensure that all of our website designs and builds suit your business and your business only. Our websites bring you customers and they do so in a way that it is both industry aware and industry specific to attract and retain your target audience(s).
