As a web designer you should always have usability at the forefront of your mind at all times. Obviously you will want to design websites that look great, however you will also want to ensure ease of use for your visitors, and ensure that the website is appealing and inviting.

No matter how great a product or service is a poorly designed site can drive away visitors and sales. Certain elements are basically internet suicide if implemented without extremely good reasons. Obviously there are always exceptions to the rule.

Now when I talk of ‘good design’ and usability I am not talking about pretty looking web pages (that goes without saying) – I do include accessibility however. This is an extremely important topic, the more accessible the site, the more visitors you can receive and in turn potential customers.

Any professional web designer will be able to point out that there are many factors which go to making a good site design. Interface, layout and graphics are just one element. This is the visual factor which for obvious reasons many individuals and designers concentrate on. However there are other elements beyond the GUI and indeed the content. These are issues relating accessibility and usability.

What I have highlighted here are 5 of the most common Usability Mistakes made online. If you are currently implementing any of the following then you should urgently consider a website overhaul.

If your website was developed in the past 12 months and incorporate any of the following elements without a very good reason then you should probably have your web developer taken outside and shot!

1) ACTIVE X
I will say this only once, “Do NOT use ActiveX”. Your site visitors will not install the component they will be too freaked-out by the security warnings.

Richard Lowe Jr says t best n his blog when he says “I don’t know about you, but when I get that little box stating a site wants to install an ActiveX control, my first impulse is to hit the NO box, quickly followed by the BACK key. This may seem a bit paranoid, but I use my computer all day long and I depend upon it for business and pleasure. Why would I want to put it at any risk for some silly little ActiveX control? The web is a huge place and there are plenty of other sites to look at”

2) BACKGROUND MUSIC

If you are not a music composer, singer, band or somehow work with Sound & Music then avoid background music at all costs. It is irritating at best, horrible loops of low quality sounds, or voice overs that start without being prompted.

This is a relatively new phenomenon, sites now have Virtual Guides an image of a cheesy looking consultant or pretty looking PA type that stands in the corner of your screen and talks over your site.

By all means experiment with these Virtual Website Guides, but do not have them auto-play. I have more than once simply closed a internet tab when it starts making noise and I am in the middle of a phonecall or worse still a Skype call.

If I really want to visit your site then I will turn the speakers off. Save everyone the trouble and ask before playing audio.

3) EXTRA LARGE/SMALL TEXT SIZE

As I have already stated there is far more to good web design then great graphics and slick branding, whilst it is important accessibility is fundamental in good site design.
Therefore it is logical that people should be able to read your content, if you have spent time, investing resources in writing well written content then it makes sense for it be clear and legible.

Using extra small font sizes is the equivalent of poor sloppy handwriting. No matter how good a novel you are probably unlikely to read the manuscript in poor handwritten format.

Your visitors need to be able to read your content without straining their eyes. If your sales copy is illegible you won’t be selling anything!

I hope you can see why these are three simple mistakes to avoid, I hope you will take the message on board and help make the web a more usable place. It is after all in everyones best interest.

About The Author: Andrew Bonar, TopExpert.com
With over 12 years experience working with and marketing internet technologies, Andrew launched his first website ‘Happenings’ in 1994, when there were less than 100,000 websites o­nline. Andrew’s early interest in the internet lead to becoming co-founder of the UK’s first Independent ISP, Cheapnet/Pobox and by 1999 he had launched one of Europe’s first payment gateways, eBanx.

You’re Blowing Off Visitors with Lower Resolutions: If you are like most web designers, you probably have a computer with a nice, big monitor.  I know that I personally use an iMac with a twenty-four inch monitor, and plan on adding another twenty-four monitor into the mix in the near future.  Since we spend so much time on our computers, it’s great for us to have large monitors.  However, it’s easy to forget that not everyone is browsing with the same kind of monitor.  In fact, if you haven’t done it before, I think you will be shocked at how many people are viewing your designs at lower resolutions (you can obtain this information from a program like Google Analytics).

Not Taking the Time to Validate Everything: A lot of times, it can be quite easy to finish a design and assume that everything is working just fine because it loads in your browser.  However, the only way you are ever going to know for sure is by taking the time to validate your code.  While things may look great in your browser, if your code isn’t actually standards compliant, it might not look so hot in a different browser.

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Because the platform has gained so much popularity in recent years (according to its homepage, it is currently being used on hundreds of thousands of blogs and websites), WordPress themes have become a very hot medium among web designers.  In fact, there are designers who are building entire businesses around designing and/or selling WordPress themes.  Whether you want to sell premium WordPress, want to give away free WordPress themes to promote your design skills or simply want to create a couple of custom WordPress themes to give your own online properties a completely unique look, you can do a lot of different things once you learn how to design a WordPress theme.

However, before you can start pumping out amazing looking WordPress themes, you need to educate yourself about how to create your own themes.  Obviously, because you are a designer, you will have a big head start over someone who is completely new to the world of design, but there are still certain things that you will need to get a grasp of before you can start making themes.

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Web Developer: If you haven’t been using the Web Developer add-on for Firefox, you have been missing out on a truly amazing tool.  This add-on has so many features that it adds an entire menu to your browser.  Normally, add-ons that do this turn out to be a waste of space, but in the case of the Web Developer add-on, this is definitely not true.

Although I could write an entire post about this one add-on, I’ll stick to some of the key highlights for designers, which include the ability to manipulate style sheets (such as disabling them completely), displaying rulers directly in your browser and numerous options for dealing with images in the browser.  For anyone who isn’t using the Web Developer add-on yet, you really owe it to yourself to give it a try.

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If you are a freelance web designer, your actual design skills are only half of the equation required to find success. In order to be a successful freelance web designer, you not only have to possess top notch design skills, but you also need to know how to get top of the line clients. Whether it’s not going after the best clients or wasting your time on clients who are never going to do anything other than drain your resources, successful client relations are a vital skill in themselves.

Although this is an area where most freelance web designers learn through trial and error, I would like to give you a handful of tips that can help you get on the right track and hopefully help you avoid the pitfalls that far too many freelance web designers have been forced to endure.

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Regardless of how experienced or talented you are in the different areas of web design, there are always times when it is useful to have reference materials at your disposal. Although you may have books or manuals that you consult from time to time, there are situations where you don’t need this detailed of a reference. Instead, you simply need a simple but useful cheat sheet to trigger your memory and help you remember (or discover) what you need to know in order to complete a specific task.

Since most web designers spend their time working in a variety of different knowledge areas, I have gone through the most common subjects that web designers need to know and put together a list of the best cheat sheets for these topics. While you probably won’t need to refer to them all the time, I can guarantee that there are situations where one or more of these cheat sheets will prove to be invaluable to you.

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In the early days of the Internet, the title “web designer simply” referred to someone who made a website look good, as opposed to a website that was nothing more than plain text and hyperlinks. However, as the Internet has evolved, the role of the web designer has changed. While there are still web designers who cling to this early definition of the job, the best web designers are taking a more holistic approach to their work. They realize that designing a great website requires more than creating something that looks pretty. In order to create a truly great website, I firmly believe that web designers need to take the following six elements into consideration:

Why are you creating a design?
Before you fire up Photoshop, you need to take a step back and think about why you are creating a design. If you don’t take time to identify the purpose of your design, I can guarantee it won’t be as successful as if you did take the time to understand the true purpose(s) of the website you are designing. If you are doing a re-design, this stage of the process is just (if not more) as important.

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