There’s a lot to think about when it comes to designing a website, am I right?
Colours, fonts, typography, copy, imagery, SEO, animations, transitions, hover effects, menus, page templates, forms, slideshows, calls to action, mobile/responsive design…
I’m exhausted just thinking about it!
One thing I have noticed over the years is that there are certain website pages and features that web designers forget to design, or that they don’t utilise to their full potential.
And I get it! I know that you want to focus your time and energy on designing the most essential aspects of a website such as creating a stunning home page or a high converting sales page. It’s easy to forget about the smaller, less exciting yet still very important elements of websites.
In this blog post I’m going to share some of the pages and features that, in my experience, are most overlooked by web designers when designing a website.
And if you are collaborating with a web developer on a web design project, you’re going to want to make sure you include designs for these pages and features (if the website requires them). I promise, they’ll make your client and your developer very happy
Error pages
An error page is a page that is presented to the user when they try to access a page on the website that doesn’t exist.
When you design a website you have to remember that the website visitors are on a journey, and you need to ensure that you don’t lead website visitors to a dead end.
An error page should not be the end of the user’s journey. The purpose of this page is to inform the visitor that there’s been an issue, and then help them get back on track with their journey.
Want to learn how to design strategic 404 error pages? I’ve written a blog post sharing my top tips and favourite error pages from across the web:
Login pages
A login page is a page on the front-end of a website with a form that allows users to login to the website and access restricted content of some form.
For example, if it’s an ecommerce website then the user will be able to login to view their orders or update their billing/shipping information. Or if it’s a membership website then users will be able to login to view the content and features that are exclusive to members.
Not all websites require a front-end login page, so always check the client’s requirements before you start designing a login page. However, if you are designing a website that does require a login page, be sure not to forget or overlook this page while you’re designing. A well designed login page can really elevate the user experience.
Single blog posts
If you’re designing a website that has a blog then you should include a design for the individual blog posts, not just the main blog archive page.
You don’t have to create a design for every blog post on the website (thank goodness!); you just need to design one layout that can be applied to all blog posts.
A lot of the designs for blog posts I see include the post title, a featured image and the main blog post copy, and that’s it. However, single blog post pages can be designed in a strategic way to keep visitors on the website for longer, and even help search engines understand the website content better. Believe me, your clients are going to love anything that makes SEO easier!
Search result pages
When you perform a search on a website you will be taken to the search results page. Our aim with the search results page is to help users find exactly what they’re looking for as quickly and with as few clicks as possible.
In WordPress, if a search results template is not present in the theme files it will fall-back on the main blog archive template. I see this a lot on WordPress websites, and although it’s not the end of the world, it doesn’t create a particularly great user experience.
Because you don’t really want your search results page looking like the blog page. The information displayed in search results often needs to be in a different format with different information.
Confirmation messages and pages
A confirmation message is a message that shows when a form on a website is successfully submitted. This could be when a user completes an email opt in form, submits a contact form, or makes a purchase on the website.
The confirmation message can be displayed on the same page as the form itself, or it can be an entire page that the user is redirected to.
You might be thinking “It’s just a confirmation message. It’s not that important.” but actually, a well thought out thank you page can play an important role when it comes to website strategy. It can be a way to build trust and confidence, or even make an extra sale if you utilise the trip-wire method.
Dropdown menus
Dropdown menus are displayed when the user interacts (usually hovers or sometimes clicks) on an item in a main menu or navigation.
The major benefit of dropdown menus is that they can help website visitors navigate around the website quicker with fewer clicks. They can also help to reduce the number of links that the visitor is initially presented with in the main menu, reducing a feeling of overwhelm when they first land on a website.
Dropdown menus can range from a super simple list of links, stacked one on top of the other, to much more complex mega menus that display many links and even other features.
Even if your client’s website doesn’t require dropdown menus from the get go, I would still recommend that you design and build these because it’s highly likely that the client will use them at some point.
Looking for some guidance on designing effective dropdown menus? I’ve got a blog post sharing my best advice, along with some examples of dropdown menus I’ve built:
Mobile menus
A mobile menu is a variation of the main menu that is displayed on mobile devices.
On smaller screens there isn’t enough room to display the links in the main menu side by side like you typically would on the desktop version of the website, and on-hover functionality (such as revealing a dropdown menu on hover) doesn’t work correctly on touch screen devices, so we need to adapt the design of the main menu.
The most common way to set up mobile menus is to hide the menu by default and then reveal it when the user clicks on a button.
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