Common Website Design Mistakes That Hurt Usability and Conversions
Ten recurring design mistakes can make websites harder to use. Learn how to spot friction in navigation, search, forms, pricing, and more.
Website design mistakes hurt usability when they make it harder for visitors to find information, understand choices, or complete a task. Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) identified ten recurring mistakes in a 2016 study of 215 participants across 43 websites. These are useful diagnostic categories, not a current census or a ranking of every website today.
Use the list below to identify where visitors may get stuck, then investigate with realistic tasks, observation, and evidence from your own site. These fixes can reduce friction; the cited research does not establish a guaranteed conversion lift or a universal penalty for any one mistake.
1. Put information where visitors expect to find it
People arrive with a goal and a mental model of how information should be grouped. A site organized around internal teams or company terminology can make relevant content hard to locate. Labels that are vague or do not describe their contents add another layer of uncertainty.
Look for: visitors opening several categories before finding a page, repeatedly using site search for basic information, or choosing a category that does not contain what its label promised.
Improve it: group pages around visitors’ goals and use the words they use. Try a findability exercise: give people representative tasks, such as locating a return policy or a service price, and watch where they look. Revise the structure when the same task repeatedly leads people to an unexpected place.
2. Reduce competing links and categories
Many similar choices can make it difficult to decide where to go. The problem is not simply that a menu has many items: overlapping categories and vague labels leave people unsure which choice fits their need.
Look for: visitors hesitating between two categories, returning to a previous page, or taking different routes to complete the same task.
Improve it: clarify category boundaries and labels. Use task-based testing to find overlap before removing links; an item that looks redundant to the team may serve a distinct visitor need.
3. Keep visitors oriented instead of creating information islands
A page can contain useful information yet leave visitors unsure where they are or what else the site offers. Pages separated from the wider structure can make it difficult to continue exploring or recover after following a link.
Improve it: preserve meaningful routes to related content and the broader site. Use consistent navigation, breadcrumbs where they help explain hierarchy, and clear links to the next likely task. Check the experience from direct entry points too: a visitor may arrive from search or a shared link without seeing the homepage first.
4. Review repetitive links in context
Repeated navigation choices and link clutter can obscure useful content and make pages harder to scan. Repetition is not always harmful: repeating a relevant next step can help someone complete a long page or a multi-step task.
Improve it: inspect repeated links in the context of the whole page. Keep repetitions that serve a clear purpose, and remove or consolidate those that compete with more useful content. Check whether visitors can distinguish the primary action from secondary routes.
5. Show material prices and fees early
Visitors need enough cost information to decide whether an offer fits their needs. Withholding fees or important conditions until late in a purchase or signup flow can cause frustration and undermine trust.
Improve it: show the relevant price, mandatory fees, and important conditions before commitment. If the total depends on choices such as quantity, location, or plan, explain what changes the total and provide a way to estimate it. Verify that the price shown in marketing, checkout, and confirmation steps is consistent.
6. Keep microsite visitors connected to the main site
A satellite site or campaign microsite can feel disconnected when it loses the parent site’s identity and navigation. Visitors may not know who operates it, where to find related information, or how to return to the main site.
Improve it: retain clear identity cues and a route back to the parent site. Keep navigation and terminology consistent enough that visitors can understand how the microsite fits into the wider experience.
7. Make site search useful when visitors need it
Search fails when results do not make relevant information easy to locate. A query can return no results, too many unrelated results, or titles and descriptions that do not help visitors choose a useful page.
Improve it: evaluate search with realistic queries drawn from visitor language. Make result titles and descriptions informative, handle common wording and likely synonyms where possible, and explain what someone can try when no matches appear. Review unsuccessful searches as clues about missing content, confusing labels, or search behavior.
8. Make filters and facets understandable
Filters help visitors narrow a large set of options, but unclear labels or inconsistent choices can make the result set harder to understand. Visitors need to know what each filter means and what has changed after selecting it.
Improve it: use labels visitors understand, make selected filters visible, and explain how to remove them. Where result counts are shown, ensure they reflect the active choices. Test combinations, including cases with no results, and give visitors a clear way to broaden the search again.
9. Prioritize information instead of overwhelming visitors
Pages with too much competing content or visual emphasis can make it difficult to find the next useful step. A visitor should not have to sort through a wall of equally prominent options to understand what matters for their task.
Improve it: prioritize information by visitor need. Use headings and concise sections to support scanning, distinguish essential choices from supporting detail, and move secondary information out of the primary path without making it inaccessible. Check the page at the screen sizes people use.
10. Make links and controls recognizable
Visitors can miss links that are concealed or do not look interactive. A link label that gives no reasonable indication of its destination or outcome can also make a person hesitate to select it.
Improve it: make interactive elements visually recognizable and use descriptive labels. Check links in their surrounding context and ensure that keyboard users can identify and reach interactive controls too.
Do hamburger menus hurt usability?
Not automatically. In an NN/g study of 179 participants completing tasks on six sites, participants used hidden navigation in 27% of desktop cases, compared with 48% for visible navigation and 50% for combined visible and hidden navigation. On mobile, hidden navigation was used in 57% of cases and combined navigation in 86%.
These are study-specific comparisons, not universal benchmarks. NN/g did not test a fully visible-only navigation condition on phones, and task-time differences do not prove a business outcome. The practical lesson is to check whether people notice and use the navigation needed for their tasks on the devices that matter. NN/g recommends showing top-level navigation on desktop; on phones, balance space constraints with discoverability and test the design in context.
Make forms easier to complete
Forms are important task touchpoints: unclear questions, unnecessary requests, and errors that do not explain how to recover can interrupt a purchase, application, or signup. NN/g’s web UX study guide points to evidence-based recommendations on form usability, cognitive load, errors, required fields, and visual organization; it is a guide, not a quantified experiment showing that one change increases conversions.
- Use clear labels and group related fields logically.
- Ask only for information needed for the task, and explain requirements that may surprise people.
- Make required fields clear before submission.
- Give errors in plain language and identify how to fix them. Keep entered data where possible so visitors do not have to start over.
- Check the form with a keyboard and assistive technology, as well as on the devices visitors use.
Include accessibility in usability reviews
Technical accessibility standards matter, but meeting technical requirements alone does not ensure a usable experience. NN/g’s accessible web design report is based on empirical observation of people who are blind, have low vision, and have motor impairments using websites and intranets. It emphasizes that practical barriers can still occur in navigation, forms, text, links, and page organization.
Review real tasks with assistive technology and consider whether people can understand the structure, reach controls, enter information, and recover from mistakes. Treat accessibility as part of usable design rather than as a final technical check.
How to find the design mistakes that affect your site
- Choose important tasks. Select goals visitors come to complete, such as comparing plans, finding a policy, or requesting a quote.
- Write realistic scenarios. Describe the goal without telling participants which menu item or control to select.
- Observe the attempt. Note misclicks, hesitation, backtracking, unclear labels, and places where a person asks what will happen next.
- Inspect the page states. Review key pages and steps, including search with no results, filtered lists, validation errors, and direct entry to a microsite page.
- Fix the obstacle and check again. Re-run the same task after a change. Separate what you observed from what you infer about business impact.
A website screenshot can help a team review layout, visual hierarchy, and differences between pages or viewport sizes. A screenshot cannot show whether a visitor understood a label, whether a control works with a keyboard, or why someone abandoned a task. Pair visual review with observed task completion and accessibility evaluation.
Or skip the browser setup
For capturing a page during a design review, you can use ScreenshotNeo, a website screenshot API and MCP server for developers. See the API documentation.
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpimport requests
r = requests.get(
"https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot",
params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://stripe.com"},
timeout=90,
)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://stripe.com' });
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Screenshot request failed: ${res.status}`);
await require('node:fs/promises').writeFile('shot.webp', Buffer.from(await res.arrayBuffer()));Replace the example URL with the page you want to review and use your API key. ScreenshotNeo accepts cookie or consent banners as a visitor and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before capture; each of those steps can be turned off. Bot checks and CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits cost nothing, and response headers report the page verdict and billing status. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients. The Free plan includes 1,000 shots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots.
Sign up for 1,000 free screenshots a month, with no card required.
Performance, reliability, and cost considerations
Design review should include the conditions in which visitors actually use a site. Check key tasks on representative screen sizes and with the content, filters, and form states that matter. For a screenshot review, capture consistent pages and viewport settings when comparing versions; dynamic content, delayed assets, and personalized states can make captures differ. Treat the image as evidence of appearance at one moment, not as proof that the page is fast, accessible, or easy to use.
Start with lightweight observation and existing site evidence, then use more structured usability research when a high-impact task remains unclear. Do not infer a conversion gain from a visual change alone. Track task success and errors in the context of your site, and interpret business metrics carefully alongside other factors that may affect them.
Common troubleshooting questions during a review
Visitors keep choosing the wrong category
Likely cause: labels or category boundaries do not match their expectations. Try: observe findability tasks, note the words visitors use, and revise labels or grouping based on the repeated failure.
Search returns no useful results
Likely cause: visitor wording differs from page terminology, or result details do not help people assess relevance. Try: test realistic queries, improve result titles and descriptions, and give a useful next step for empty results.
People abandon a form after an error
Likely cause: the message does not say what is wrong, required fields were unclear, or entered information was lost. Try: identify the affected field, explain the correction, clarify requirements, and preserve valid entries where possible.
A page looks clear in a screenshot but visitors still struggle
Likely cause: a static image cannot reveal interaction, comprehension, keyboard access, or assistive technology barriers. Try: observe a realistic task and check interaction states with the input methods visitors use.
A mobile menu is not being used
Likely cause: visitors may not notice it, may not understand its label, or may not need it for the tested task. Try: test the task on phones and check whether a combined approach makes key destinations easier to discover.
FAQ
What are the most common website design mistakes?
NN/g’s 2016 article identified ten recurring issues: unexpected content locations, competing categories, information islands, repetitive links, hidden prices, disconnected microsites, poor search, flawed filters, overwhelming information, and hidden links. The list is a diagnostic framework, not a current ranking.
Can poor website design lower conversions?
It can create friction in purchase or signup tasks and may contribute to abandonment. The cited study says the flaws can hurt business metrics, but it does not establish a general conversion percentage or prove a causal lift from fixing any one mistake.
Should every site show all navigation links?
No single layout suits every site and device. The navigation study found differences in use across tested conditions; validate discoverability against your visitors’ tasks and screen constraints.
Does passing an accessibility check mean a site is usable?
No. Standards provide important requirements, while practical usability also depends on whether people can complete real tasks with their input methods and assistive technology.
