With Halloween around the corner, it’s the perfect time to visit the ghosts of web design past. Even though these outdated web design trends should have been buried in a digital graveyard long ago, their ghosts still seem to pop up every once in a while. If you don’t want your website to scare away visitors with outdated design, watch out for these dead trends.
Flash Intros
These animated introduction screens that played before the main site loaded were once all the rage. However, modern web visitors don’t want to sit through a flashy animation before they can view a web page. On the technical side, search engines are unable to index Flash content–meaning they are terrible for search engine optimization.
Auto-Playing Media
In the same vein as Flash intros is auto-playing media. This is audio or video that begins to play immediately when a website is loaded. While auto-playing your favorite music might have been cutting-edge in the days of MySpace, it has no place in modern web design. Users want to choose when to interact with media, not have it forced on them.
Cluttered Sidebars
Once-popular cluttered sidebars filled with widgets and advertisements have given way to cleaner, more minimalist designs. The increase of mobile users has largely driven the death of this trend, as sidebars don’t translate well to smaller screens.
Intrusive Pop-Ups
Pop-ups that disrupt the user experience without providing significant value have become less popular due to user annoyance. While pop-ups do have a place in some websites, designers need to consider if it’s the best choice for the content or if the pop-up will just annoy visitors.
Plain HTML
These websites contain only basic text, with no or minimal design elements. These HTML-only websites are outdated because they aren’t visually appealing. Modern web users expect more design and aesthetics than these HTML-only websites can offer.
Over-Designed Sites
These are the exact opposite of HTML-only sites. Overdesigned sites feature busy backgrounds, flashing gifs, scrolling text, and more. There is a balance to be had between no design and over-design.
Non-Responsive Design
This one should be a no-brainer. Modern websites need to be accessible on screens of any size, and gone are the days of only worrying about how a website looks on a desktop computer. Phones, tablets, and laptop screens all need to be considered when creating a website.
If your website is looking a little zombie-ish, don’t worry! Kite Media can help bring it back to life! Our expert web design team specializes in crafting functional websites that are modern but not trendy (meaning they won’t show up on this list in a few years!) Contact us today to see how we can help your web presence!