6 UI Anti-Patterns That Every Designer Should Avoid

Every now and then, we come across a few websites with UI features that are disappointing. No doubt the designers work their best and have no plans to make you jump throughout the site. But, something has failed somewhere! The designs they have chosen are wrong and failing to take some features into account has resulted in chaos.

Many a time, such failed designs are categorized into anti-patterns and it indicates a set of design patterns that the designers should avoid. This is important as anti-pattercan irritate the users and such unsatisfied users can lead to increased bounce rates and decreased conversion rate. Now, this sounds alarming, right?

So to help you out, here I am with 6 UI anti-patterns that can seriously irritate your users.

Moving page elements

Once you are on a web page, you click on the link you want to open. But, at the same time, another page element is triggered and loaded. This way you are navigated to another page rather than the one you intended to open.

The main cause of such unfavourable situation is late-loading scripts. This is mainly because of the social widgets or advertisements added to it. Sometimes, it is done deliberately to promote an ad rather than open the genuine link.

Messed up homepage

There are few website designs where you will feel that homepage is designed by a group. It seems like people from every department wants their domain to be present on the homepage.

Always understand that a website is about the company and should solely represent it. Too much information can confuse the users and they may leave the site leading to lower conversion rates. So simply, keep it this way - Avoid what causes you lesser conversions.

Loading with information

We all have been there. We all have visited websites, scrolled it, again and again. So trust us - we can scroll!!! Don’t design the website with all the information ‘above the fold’. Use the space, design accordingly and spread the information.

Clickable or non-clickable?

There are few elements on the web page that are accorded to be clickable. For example, a company logo. People have the belief that clicking on the logo may directly take them to the homepage of the website. So if you plan to go against the flow, chances are more that you may disappoint the users.

Blanking the forms

Many websites make their users to fill up forms for one or the other reasons. Sometimes users put in the wrong information and then tries to change it. They now get a completely blank form. But do you really need to empty all the fields just for a human error? Alas! So your users are stuck up filling the form again!

Failing to navigate the user to the right place

Certain websites ask the users to create an account to access certain information. No issues, I am fine with it. But something that irritates me and other online users is that you brings us back on the homepage after creating the account rather than taking us to that page with information. Now this is not done! If you really want us to create an account at least take us where we want to go! Don’t do it just for our emails.

Now these are the 6 anti-patterns that I come across and would love to never encounter while using a website again. If you have come across any others, mention them in the comments below.