Why Avoiding Cliches Is Best In Web Design
Designing a website is by no means an exact science.
Designing a website is by no means an exact science. It is a subjective process which means that one website might look good to its designer but might not look as good to other designer or website visitors. It is therefore not easy to establish what is right or wrong in web design. On the other hand, there are some things that most designer would agree on, like avoiding things which have been beaten to death. The reasoning is that if thousands of sites are already featuring the same thing, why would you go and design your website with the same exact feature? It only shows a lack of originality and worse can make a website look unfriendly to visitors.
For one, thousands of websites have page counters. It became popular with blogs sprouting throughout the web in recent years. For bloggers who are not so tech-savvy, it provides them a umber to see how many people have visited their site. For commerce sites though, it is not recommended since it can just ruin the look of the whole website especially if it is large. If you want to have an idea how many people are visiting your site, there are analytics tool which you can use which provide more in-depth information about the number of visitors and their behavior while on your site. If your website has plenty of traffic and you have a visible page counter, it might come off as being arrogant.
Another cliche that you might want to avoid is the use of page fading and javascript scrolling features. This has been done countless of times by many designers. If you must use javascript to enhance the functionality and look of your website, make sure that you do it in such a way that it would be fresh or something that visitors to the website have not seen yet.
It is of course very much okay to take inspiration from other websites. For example, if you find a good layout, do not just copy it. You can add your own twist to it which is better since you are not only designing a website with a layout that you like but also infuse the design with your own style. By avoiding cliches, you can ensure that your site would not be the same as hundreds of other websites. It will help the site stand out in a good way.
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Heidi Mclaughlin is a part-time blogger working in the financial security industry. When not busy at work, she finds time looking for interesting topics to write about from SEO to Santa Barbara web design.
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