wordcamp / 5 Common UX Design Mistakes to Avoid

5 Common UX Design Mistakes to Avoid

Andy Thorne
5 Common UX Design Mistakes to Avoid blog post header image

User Experience (UX) is imperative. It sits up there with SEO at the top of the content castle and is essential for the success of your website. However, there are 5 common UX design mistakes to avoid, which you might be making.

1. Click here

Writing ‘click here’ on your clickable buttons or links isn’t considered good practice, for a few reasons:

Around 56% of your users are probably on mobile (and won’t be “clicking” anything), so it’s an inappropriate verb to be using. It’s unnecessary; the internet’s been around for a while now, people know how to identify a clickable link or button and they know what to do with it.

It breaks up the sentence, worsening readability by making it more difficult to process. It has no context, and Google won’t like that (unless you’re trying to rank for the keyword “Click Here”). Instead of stating the literal action (click here), try describing the purpose of the link (e.g. buy now).

2. Poor colour contrast

Colour blindness (also known as colour vision deficiency, abbreviated to CVD) affects approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women across the globe.

It might look perfectly fine to your designer, but consider that the average resolution of a user’s device may not be as high-spec as the one being used by your designer. Colours can be represented slightly differently on different screens (hence the common disclaimer about the colour of an item differing slightly to the image shown).

3. Tiny touch targets

Designing for smaller screens should never mean using smaller icons. Icons and other touch targets must be accessible to users. If they find they can’t click on something because it’s too small, they won’t stick around forever trying.

4. Text embedded in images

Embedding text within images can be unsightly and can cause images to become obviously pixelated. The primary argument against it is the content is not accessible for those using screen readers, even when the text is in the alt text.

5. Inconsistency

Inconsistency is the devil of UX and it’s commonly found in website navigation and icons. Have you ever visited a website and been confused by the navigation? Or found a social media icon and found it does something you weren’t expecting when you clicked?

Every aspect of your website should convey appropriate context and should be easily differentiated from similar aspects. Not doing so can confuse your user and they may lose trust in you if something unexpected happens when they click on an element of your website.

You need to ensure that each icon and menu item accurately conveys the consequences of clicking on it.

Want to Find out More than Just the 5 Common UX Design Mistakes to Avoid?

Looking for more advice on UX friendly design? Head here.