Has it happened to you that you felt uncomfortable asking several questions in direct messages on social media because you needed to get information about a product?
Why would you search for those on social media, you’re wondering. Because there’s no website, or there is a lousy one, and you are propelled to dig deep to find out basic stuff. You know bad websites, the ones that are largely unclear or leave you with the feeling of being manipulated without answering your question. Thus, the ones that don’t solve any of your dilemmas. May look nice though.
On the other hand, if we assume that your business is striving for excellence, your website, being its most visible representation, has to follow the same logic. Ask our friends at web design company Houston.
So, we’re going to talk about some mistakes designers make when creating your online presence.
The List of Mistakes
There are several areas where they may occur, but according to UX Planet, most likely it’s about lowering the standard, poor analysis of the market and trends, and not designed for the actual client, ie:
- The designer doesn’t understand how important usability is;
- They don’t test the product;
- They fail to utilize trends analysis, or
- automatized data analysis
There is an analogy of an architect designing buildings that are functional AND nice-looking, so the same should go for a web designer. If what you make is just pretty, it’ll fall apart sooner rather than later.
It’s important to understand that you are not designing for some imaginary text-book judges, but real humans who are wired to think in a particular way. Therefore, it’s important to check if your design complies with the human aspect. If it’s empathetic, so to say. The website has to appeal to both rational and emotional parts of existence. By doing that, people start trusting your business.
Thinking Design- “Design Thinking”
Let’s digress a little bit: the designer should avoid the mistake of not talking to the client throughout the product design iterations, assuming things instead.
What you need is to apply “design thinking” methodology, the five rules designed by the Institute of Design at Stanford. The creators imply that if we get these five correctly, not necessarily in the order explained further, we can solve problems on a lot larger scale than the designers: such as companies, institutions, a state even.
They take the following stance- problems occur when we can’t pinpoint them, and that’s because:
- Designers are unable to comprehend people’s needs (“empathize”) and get what motivates them and how they experience things;
- they fail to look at the problems in terms of humanness (“define the problem”)- meaning, not just state the facts and figures when setting a goal, but doing it through the lens of a human being;
- they fail to brainstorm ideas (“ideate”)- first with “worst possible ideas”;
- they fail to make cheap prototypes (“prototype”) where they experiment, examine and re-examine some solutions,
- which leads to testing the product (“test”, obviously), thoroughly and carefully.
All of these steps are important to gain the deepest possible understanding of the people and the product as well.
So, to get the right website, and make highly informed decisions based on the insights you acquire later in the stages, you need to constantly go back to the first steps and use the information properly. Basically, you need to regroup the problems all the time, until you get them right- i.e. until you get the right solutions. That’s how you understand your users better and, consequently, their product.
Following or setting the trends?
When it comes to trends, we do know that they are desire-triggers, making people susceptible to do perform an action, i.e. to buy something. It’s human behavior that creators need to understand and contribute to. Does it reek of manipulation to you? Yes, but that’s the digital consumerist era we live in.
Anyway, designers need to draw new ideas from that mechanism. Go look at Google Trends insights. And make the product relevant by doing the trend analysis.
Automation and data analysis
Don’t underestimate it and don’t be afraid of it, either. At the beginning of the decade, you could’ve used a couple of techniques, now it’s more than 10 that went automated.
Numbers will help you collect evidence for your assumptions and help your design truly work. Using software to do that ensures efficacy and speed; they are cheaper and are able to compare large sets of data.
Conclusion
One mistake usually leads to many others.
Designers need to be well-aware of what moves their clients to be able to create the product which everyone trusts. By learning from your mistakes, you make sure you’ll deliver the best product. For the user, of course.
Author Byline: Liam Collins is a tech pundit and Web enthusiast working at TuiSpace.com. He spends most of his time reading and writing about the current affairs in the world of information technology. When he isn’t working, he likes going for long bike rides and walks in nature.