UX Mistakes to Avoid in Your Website or Mobile App

User Experience (UX) is the mainstay of a website or mobile application. It sets the foundation for a great digital product. But designers quite often tend to make some UX mistakes while designing the software application. What are these mobile app UX mistakes? We will find out later in this blog post.

Every UX designer tries to ensure that the end-users get a rich browsing experience right from the moment they land on the application till they exit. For this to happen, the app must leave a strong first impression, create meaningful interactions, and guide users throughout the app effortlessly. If it falls short of users’ expectations, you will eventually lose them to your competitors.

Users rely heavily on mobile apps these days for almost every sort of activity, be it about ordering food, booking a cab, or sending money. There are already many apps available in the app marketplace that let users do the needful, but only those apps stand out that possess a great UX design. So, while designing a mobile app, it’s important that it delivers an optimum user experience. Anything less than perfect will give the competing apps the upper hand.

Let’s delve into some common UX mistakes that you should avoid to decrease the bounce rate and keep users engaged while they navigate your website or mobile app.

1. Designing Based on Assumptions

Among the mobile app UX mistakes that some designers often make is designing experiences based on assumptions. This isn’t a good practice. One needs to conduct proper research on the current market trends, do competitor analysis, research the target audience, and then create ideal user personas. When you decide on your own without collecting much data, it gets quite challenging to meet the users’ needs and expectations later. If you don’t design according to what your audience wants, there are chances that the product will fail. So, don’t just assume, collect useful information, and then prepare the UX design accordingly.

Also Read: Things to Consider When Outsourcing UI/UX Design

2. Building Confusing Layouts

A great UX design demands an intuitive, simple, and user-friendly layout. Overly complex layouts can create confusion and irritate users. A poor UI, on top of it, can make things even worse. The app elements and controls should be clearly visible. Features must be intuitive, and if they aren’t easy to grab for the first-time user, a short tutorial overlay (technically known as coach marks) can be placed to help users understand what each element means or functions. Users desire a simplistic interface and look for solutions that address their needs quickly and seamlessly.

3. Non-Responsive Design

Adding to the list of top UX design mistakes is not using a responsive design. With most people using smartphones nowadays to perform any task, it’s imperative that the website design looks as good on a hand-held device as it does on a desktop. Try using a responsive design so that the website elements look great no matter what device the users are using.

In the case of a non-responsive design, the website elements may load improperly and not function as intended on mobile devices, leading to a poor user experience and a high bounce rate. Ensure that the information displayed is not creating any sort of hindrance to the user flow, and keeping them engaged with the content.

Also Read: Ecommerce UI Design: Strategies and Best Practices

4. Too Many Popups

As the saying goes- Too much of anything is bad, the same applies to popups as well. Although one of the favorite strategies of the marketing teams to boost conversion rates, too many popups hamper the user experience and are rightly so in the list of common mobile app UX mistakes. Not only do they distract the users from their purpose but also tend to raise frustration when the users have to close the popup window again and again. Imagine someone landing on your website or app and getting popup after popup. One or two popups, that too after a gap, should work well. Avoid overusing them.

5. Illegible Fonts and Inappropriate Images

There’s nothing bad in creating designs with innovative typefaces, however, it may bring some issues if the words aren’t readable. While trying to produce new and different design options, UX designers usually disregard how letters go with the words they are using. Use a nice combination. As far as a novelty typeface is concerned, do not overlook the number of words used, and also check how legible it is.

Another common UX mistake that designers make is using unsuitable images. Inappropriate images can spoil all the hard work put into an effective UX. There’s no point in using images that don’t seem to fit with the content. Avoid using common web images. Use the relevant ones that speak the topic or the content. Most importantly, use high-quality images. Never settle down with low-resolution images.

6. Poor Navigation

How easily a user can navigate from one point to another is arguably one of the most important factors in a UX design. If the users find trouble navigating your website or mobile app, they will bounce off straight away. Poor navigation is also among the common UX design mistakes made by designers.

For a better user experience, you need to ensure that the users are able to navigate throughout the website effortlessly without any inconvenience. Whether it’s the navigation bar, menu bar, header, or footer, everything should be well-categorized and make the user journey smooth and elegant.

Also Read: Latest UI Design Trends That You Can Incorporate Into Your Mobile App

7. Aesthetics Over Functionality

The website should have a balance between creativity and functionality. In recent years, there have been talks about personalizing the website with real and sterling images, creative graphics & interactive design elements. Although the aesthetic aspects are crucial for UX, they shouldn’t override the website’s functionality.

Similarly, the functionality shouldn’t be prioritized to the point where it feels that quality has been compromised. If there isn’t good enough content to keep users hooked to your website, functionality alone won’t help much.

In a nutshell, the website should be visually appealing, aesthetically pleasing, and creative.

8. Slow Loading

Today, faster page loading is a must; it’s no more an option. Users like to browse those websites or applications that load quickly. Slow loading not only frustrates users but also compels them to abandon the site. This may be due to too many images and elements on the site or app. So while designing, designers should keep a strict focus on optimizing the web pages to reduce the page load time and attract more visitors. Working on this UX design mistake would help scale up your website’s performance. In fact, even Google prefers to rank those websites on the SERPs that offer faster loading of web pages.

Final Thoughts

Many other things indicate poor UX, such as using complicated forms, forceful signup or user registration, poor app architecture, no white space, etc. Besides all these, there’s one thing that designers should consider very seriously, which is listening to users and incorporating feedback. See what users have to say about your website or app. No one can give you more genuine feedback than your users, they are the best judges you can have. It is therefore recommended to perform usability testing.

At Dew, we have a team of highly skilled and experienced UI/UX designers who ensure that any such UX mistakes do not occur in your application. Get in touch with us to know how we can help deliver an outstanding UX.