Even though there are a lot of ways to design a website, which can be affected by the expected functionality of the site, the average aesthetics of the target audience, and the skill level of the developer, there are some things that just shouldn’t change. Some things are assumed to be common knowledge in the design space, and if a website doesn’t have them integrated, such a website is regarded to be one with bad design.
While that’s the case, we can’t outrightly say that there’s a fine line between a good website and a bad one. Rather, we’re considering the degree of implementation or nonfulfillment of these good website design signatures.
In this article, we’ll highlight and explain the elements/signatures that make a good website; the more a website checks out with these elements, the more it’s represented in the good side of the website classification spectrum.
Table of Contents
How to Identify a Bad Website & What Makes a Good Website?
To be able to differentiate a bad website from a good one, we only need to identify the hallmarks of a good website and classify anything that doesn’t meet the benchmark as a bad website.
This is considered the most efficient way as you’re able to eliminate all ambiguity concerning the possibilities of how a bad/not-so-good website can present itself.
We do intend you to encumber you with so much details in this clarity blog posts, it is why we have just draw down what makes a good website to two basic factors;
- Aesthetics; does it look good?
- Functionality; does it work great?
Visual Appeal/Aesthetics
When differentiating between a good and bad website design, the visual appeal to its users comes first. Although its importance is a little downplayed when it comes to the entire classification of a website into good/bad in general, its importance to website design cannot be overemphasized.
First off, people are likely to bounce off a website when its layout and color combination is ugly. More so, for a business website, it’s likely to make fewer sales as people often attribute a good visual layout to authenticity. Here are some visual appeal qualities that your website should have.
- White space/background
- Non-cluttered interface
- Writeups and microcopies that are straight to the point
- Clearly state Call-to-actions (CTAs)
- High-quality imagery, graphics and videos
While this may already be common knowledge, here are some things you want to avoid having.
- Background music on site
- Poor code-base
- More than two font styles and more than 3 colors
- Long paragraphs of texts
- Poor image quality and graphics
- Slow loading pages
- Unoptimized images
Unless it’s a website offering a service without competition its operation is likely not to be profitable as there’s always going to be other platforms improving the visual appeal of their platform, attracting more viewers than yours.
Functionality
It’s often said that the functionality of a website is a combination of its user experience and user interface. This is because even though you think about the functionality of a website first, you have to make sure that it’s integrated into the user interface you’re going to use to deliver a good user experience for your prospective audience.
While that’s the case, the functionality of a website is always a measure of how well the user can utilize it for their expected tasks. Here are some standard functionality practices that you want to integrate into your website design.
- Establish information hierarchy. This is all about making sure that the layout of your website isn’t scattered, rather everything is well structured such that a user has an idea of what to expect when they click a button
- Use colors to guide your audience
- Add a unique selling proposition and don’t rely solely on the about us page
- Ensure simplistic texts and navigation
Overall, these are the two elements of a good or bad website design.
First, you want to always consider the visual appeal which can include considering things like colors, animations, and text that make up the site. Then you want to consider the functionality which incorporates all a website is expected to do, and how that is helping the prospective customers journey to be seamless on the website.
