User experience is one of the most important factors from every product and UI has become one of the elements that can determine great UX. However, not all UI are great for UX as some UI will bring bad effects for your UX. Yet there are still so many websites that push certain design trends which actually cause negative UX. Some web designers may not understand that some UI may be bad, but some may do it on purpose. So, if you don’t know which kinds of UI that is good or bad for your UX, you better read several points below.
- Unwanted Modals
The idea of a modal window is a smart concept. It allows developers add concept over the page without the need to open a new tab. But the real problem is the unwanted modals not the modal windows for they always drag down the user experience. In fact, you can find three different types of “unwanted” modal popups:
- Exit intents which open when the user’s mouse leaves the page body, usually hovering the browser tab,
- Timed modals that open after a set amount of seconds;
- Scroll modals that open after the user scrolls a certain distance down the page.
From the above information, you need to re-think whether it’s worth it to apply an unwanted modal popup to your website. For it will annoy your users to get a higher conversion rate. But these unwanted messages also give modals a bad name, which is tough because they serve a real purpose in UI design. These can be used wisely, like with modal signup fields or information-based modals triggered from a user’s mouse click. Or you can make it annoying by just make it appear from out of nowhere.
- Guilt in Copywriting
Guilt copywriting which appeared in modals had become a trend for years ago. This kind of copywriting annoys users but increase signups. You can find this type of copywriting in many sites. In fact, this writing can also appear in sidebar fields or in-content opt-in forms. This copywriting will make you feel guilt instantly as you close the window. For example, the subscribe button looks ordinary, but the cancel button might read “No thanks, design is not my hobby”. This strategy might work well from a marketer’s standpoint, but certainly holds little value from a UX standpoint.
- Slide-In Ads/Offers
Sometimes in web you will find a small box slide into view from the side. This box is usually a feedback box for user testing, or it might be social sharing links or even a discount promotion. This is a good idea to get user’s feedback. But just don’t use it too much, at least 2 different slide-in boxes on either side of the page, not 3 or more.
- Nav Menus Without Padding
Navigation menu in every site usually has padding around them. But, you’ll find that some padding isn’t clickable unless you click on the exact block area of the text itself. You need to take 30 seconds to move CSS padding from a link’s container element to the link itself. Even though, the navigation is still the same, but now users can click the link and the space around the link.
- Paginated Listicles
Another UI design which can damage your UX is content with one-item-per-page listicles. This is because few persons will enjoy clicking the “next” button constantly to read through a clickbait post. Unfortunately, there are many websites that use this kind of UI. It is mostly about page views and ad revenue more than anything else. So, it needs not only the work of designer but also the work of webmasters to prevent any multi-paged articles.