5 Usability Mistakes Harming Your Brand

Andy Zenner
5 min readJan 23, 2023

Usability can help your brand to succeed or cause it to fail. If you want to give your customers the best experience and keep them engaged with your products, it cannot be ignored. Brands still make the same web design mistakes that cause their usability to decrease and customers to leave.

We want to help you avoid these usability mistakes so your brand isn’t being affected by them. If you haven’t thought about the usability of your brand and how it can change your customer’s experience, you need to know about the biggest web design mistakes that brands usually make.

Photo by Patrik Michalicka on Unsplash

Not Adding A Search Bar

Many people like to use the search bar to find the information they are looking for, and not having one makes their experience worse. It would help if you made the user experience convenient, as not doing this will cause frustration, and people will look for a different product to use.

If you have a search bar, you need to ensure that it’s easy to see. There should be a contrast between it and the background it is on. Make it easy to see and use. This will reduce frustration and help website visitors find what they want quickly.

Give people more options to filter their searches when they use your website. This will help them see what they need and give them a quality experience that is not being matched by your competition.

Only Focusing On Aesthetics

Your website should not only focus on aesthetics; you also need to think about the functionality and how people will use the website. If the website looks good but is hard to use, people will leave the website.

It would help if you found the right balance between the website’s aesthetics and how easy it is to use. You should test the website with a group of your target users and ask them what they like and what can be changed. Use what they say to make changes that will give everyone using the website a better experience.

Photo by Tran Mau Tri Tam ✪ on Unsplash

Website Design Not Being Responsive

The design of your website needs to be responsive. All websites need to have responsive designs so users can use them easily on different devices. Responsive designs help with accessibility and give everyone a good user experience, whether they are using the website on a PC or their smartphones.

A responsive website design adapts to different screen sizes and fits all of the content on the screen so visitors can easily see it and find what they need. Since more people use their mobile devices to access websites than desktops, your website needs to be mobile friendly and have a responsive design, so it doesn’t alienate them.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

If you don’t want people to leave your website immediately, you need to make its design responsive. Brand strategy companies will tell you this is one of the first steps you need to take when trying to improve the usability of your products.

Don’t lose out on new customers because your website isn’t responsive. This inconvenience will associate with a negative impression of your brand. If you need help with making this change, find a corporate branding agency to handle the changes you need to make.

Your Website’s Content

Your website’s content is the essential factor that keeps visitors engaged or makes them leave. You need to make sure your content is planned and has a structure that quickly helps users find what they want.

High-quality content is essential if you want your website to be successful and keep people engaged and make them stay on your web pages for longer. The usability of your website needs to make finding this content accessible, and it should highlight important content, so visitors don’t need to search for it.

You need to follow specific rules to ensure your website’s content is high-quality and valuable to people. Website content should be released consistently, essential keywords need to be added to the content to make it easier to find, older content needs to be updated, and your content needs to lead people to buy your products.

If you haven’t heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you need to learn more about it. All of the content you add to your website needs to be optimized. The benefits of SEO content are:

  • Your brand awareness will increase
  • Your website will receive more organic search engine traffic
  • It will increase your brand’s and content’s credibility
  • You will get a higher return on investment (ROI)
  • Search Engine Optimization will give your website consistent promotion
  • It will optimize your website’s usability

Cluttered Design

You need to make sure your website is easy to use. If your website looks cluttered, then you need to change that quickly. Keep the design simple and only show what people need. Everything else can be removed. This will make it easier for people to find what they want.

A minimalistic website design will let you highlight the critical content, which will improve the user experience, which should be your goal. All of your content needs to be accessible to everyone.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Conclusion

Usability should not be ignored, and you should follow the best design practices to ensure your website is usable and accessible to everyone. This will help you reach everyone that wants to know more about your brand and buy your products.

You need to make sure that you avoid these common web design mistakes when developing your site. Aesthetics are essential, but they need to be balanced with your website’s functionality. If you need help, find brand strategy companies that offer you the services you need.

Thanks for reading!

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