Books are judged by their covers, even if they shouldn’t be. The design of a car is the most deciding factor for buyers, even if safety and the engineering are more important aspects of a transportation device.
The same goes for digital design as well, a lot of website visitors decide on trusting a brand or buying their product based on the design of their website.
Designing is used to display information clearly, effectively and seamlessly across multiple platforms while allowing creative elements to retain user attention.
Overdesigning is when form is preferred over function. You might have been in this situation where you see a website and you don’t know where the menu is or the website itself is loading slowly. In these websites, over-using creative elements results in the website failing at what it is supposed to do – displaying information and helping the user navigate.
Although these design elements might look entrancing at first, they result in the website failing its main objective, and often get out of hand, resulting in negative effects for the website. Below we’ll go over some problems that might arise with over-designing.
Too Distracting
Too often, people think of good design as something creative and eye-catching. But that’s not the case, good design is invisible. The user looks at it and thinks “of course it’s like this” because the design was made with human intuition in mind and doesn’t need the user to think about something like where the contact page is or how they can access their shopping cart.
Over-designing and over-using creative elements results in the website being confusing and hard to navigate. The flashy animations might be too distracting and result in the user having a hard time finding something they might like.
Slow Loading Times
Overly visual websites load too slowly, and users always leave websites that have slow loading rates. 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take over 3 seconds to load and you don’t want to be among those numbers because of your design choice and stick to a more balanced design that doesn’t make your website performance suffer.
New Normal
Designs are perceived to be more attractive when the engagement with them is not for the long term. When users see that design more often, it becomes normal and doesn’t excite the user as much. If your attractive design was a trade-off for ease of use, in long-term usage that “good” design fades and only the negative points remain. That’s why you don’t see eye-catching animations or design in websites that require the users to keep revisiting like for example Amazon.
Web designers and developers are creative people who want to display all their skills at once and it might get out of hand. But if you are the company’s owner and your goal is to get leads or entice the user to return, you should find the right balance between creativity and practicality.