When designing websites, attempting to innovate can be a true double-edged sword. Done effectively, innovating could lead your website not only to be easy and enjoyable to use, but also to become a big trendsetter among other websites. All of this, in turn, can help to attract more visitors to your website as word of its great design spreads. Done ineffectively, however, innovating can leave your website’s visitors feeling needlessly frustrated. Here are some tips for how to innovate in the right way when you use web design Stafford services courtesy of Rake Mark.

Avoid just using technology for the sake of it

Though it can be easy to be wowed by a recently-introduced technology, you should resist using it for your website if it fails to add any true functional or aesthetic value to it. Innovation does involve taking risks and exploiting promising opportunities, but not using a new technology just because you can.

Keep things simple

As a general rule of thumb, if your website is so innovative in its design that you have to educate your visitors about how to use the website, you have probably innovated a little too much. The problem with making a website design too complex is that it can deter people from staying with your website to see what of substance it offers.

Avoid a tendency to show off

Some website designers can be tempted to add many bells and whistles to a website simply to show off their web design expertise. But what is the point of this if it sees the website sacrificed in both its functionality and appearance? Consider how your website’s design can convenience your website’s visitors, rather than satisfy your ego as a website designer. You can do this with help from Rake Mark’s web design Stafford services

Many businesses have realised how beneficial their websites can be for helping them to spread the word about the companies and what they have to offer. Indeed, for the average business, setting up a website is probably easier than it ever has been. However, there is one large drawback with the ease with which websites can be built: the great frequency of particular errors in the designs of many websites. Here is a list of just some of the most common errors in website design that any future website designer should avoid making.

Too little originality

Though a company might be tempted to save time in the short term by simply copying the design template of a competing website, in the long term, their website will be more successful with a more unique design that is more representative of the company.

Over-the-top appearance

These days, there are so many different possibilities concerning images, graphics and flash videos on websites that it can be tempting to draw on many of them for the same website. However, too many visual bells and whistles like this can cause a website to load slowly, which can lead many people too impatient for the website to load to abandon it for a rival website. Hence, it is better to keep a website’s design more minimalistic.

Too little content

A website shouldn’t just look good; it should also be highly informative. After all, many visitors to a company’s website are there because they want to learn about what the company is and offers. However, such a website should also avoid going too far the other way and providing its visitors with too much content, as many visitors to the website will want to get the information that they seek through simply taking a quick glance

If you tend to regularly familiarise yourself with what is going on in the web design world, then chances are that you are already familiar with responsive web design. Responsive web design is, as its name suggests, a web design that is responsive to the different screen sizes and other factors of different devices through which the website is viewed. However, though the rising use of devices like smartphones and tablet computers for Internet usage might hint at many great benefits of responsive web design, otherwise commonly known as RWD, for many website owners, it should still not necessarily be made a priority for every single website. So, how can you tell if it should be for yours?

Check your website’s statistics

It would be common sense that, if your website is most commonly viewed through devices with smaller screens than desktop and laptop computers, like smartphones and tablet computers, then your website could benefit much more from an RWD than a website that is mainly viewed through more traditional means. You can see profiles of the types of devices that are being used to access your website by looking at relevant statistics generated for your website by highly-esteemed statistics service Google Analytics.

Consider your own expectations

However, one problem with such statistics is that they would only demonstrate how your website has so far been viewed, rather than also how your website is likely to be viewed in the future. Hence, you should think carefully about how your website might be viewed in future by members of your target audience. Are such people likely to, for example, initially view your website through smartphones while on the go before later accessing it through desktop or laptop computers at their homes?

Long-established UK entertainment store chain HMV recently entered administration following two years of financial struggles and the failure in recent weeks of the group’s major creditors, including banks, landlords, film houses and record labels, to agree revised terms that would keep HMV trading. Many people have already speculated about the reasons for the chain’s fall from grace, but one reason that has been particularly commonly cited is the chain’s failure to embrace the world of online retail quickly enough. Could some important lessons about e-commerce web design be learned from HMV’s failure?

Children of the revolution

Well, basically, yes. Ten to fifteen years ago, many similar retailers, including Amazon, heavily invested in online operations; many of these retailers are today thriving. Though HMV did eventually follow suit, it ultimately proved a case of too little, too late; other online retailers had already established their names. Phillip Beeching, in an article for the Guardian, has suggested that HMV could have very effectively exploited the power of the Internet due to the power of its brand and its heritage in music and unrivalled access to content from film, game and music companies. However, it instead left a gap in the market that online retailers like Play.com exploited.

Lessons to be learnt

So, what are the lessons that retailers can learn from HMV’s failure? Well, firstly, that the convenience of the Internet in helping many people to buy items both flexibly and affordably should not be underestimated; therefore, retailers that currently run only bricks and mortar operations should seriously consider investing in online retail arms, while retailers already based online could benefit hugely, especially in the long term, from endeavouring to further improve their online retail offerings.