Saturday, February 15, 2025

4 Over Thinking Errors that Can Destroy Website Creativity

Creativity can be defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems and communicating with others. Creativity is an intangible and the most subjective of qualities, but one which forms the backbone of any website.

Why do you need creativity?

With the exponential growth of the internet, the number of websites has increased. This means there is cutthroat competition between these sites to grab the attention of their target audience. Couple this with the short attention span of website visitors nowadays and you have got a real problem on your hands.

So how to create a website that stands out?

It is creativity that will help you differentiate your site from others in the same niche.

Look at these websites:

 

 

image1 

Image Source: Curiousspace.com

image2

Image Source: c-roots.com

You could say these sites are the epitome of creativity. There is something different and vibrant about them that ‘guarantees’ they will stay with you long after you’ve closed them and moved on.

If you want your website to have the same impression on people, you must be imaginative and strive to build a website that is not just good but is excellent.

But this results in a problem.

 

Pressure of Being Creative Leads to Overthinking

Every business wants its website to stand out from the crowd and “shout” the loudest. In a bid to bring an extremely unique, impressive and engagement friendly website to life, designers have their work cut out for them. Many times, this puts them under a lot of pressure and they start to overdo the thinking process that lies behind website creation. Each point and each aspect of the website is dissected to such an extent that it fails to come up as a cohesive whole.

Here are some overthinking errors that destroy website creativity:

1.       Overdoing Requirements Gathering and Planning

As a designer, you must question your clients regarding the website purpose, target audience, and objectives. There are plenty of other facets that you will need clarity on and which will help you develop a website that is perfectly in line with client requirements.

But, you need to be careful here. There is a tendency amongst designers to lose the plot and ask irrelevant questions; questions that are in no way related to the design of the site. For e.g. have you approached another designer with your project, if yes, why did you reject him? Now, this isn’t the question you need to ask your client. By asking such questions you are actually wasting precious time and creating a scenario for confusion.

Something else that some designers overdo is, planning. Yes, you need to go ahead and plan your design process but don’t go back to the drawing board again and again. One reason why this happens is the client keeps coming back with more demands or keeps changing the end goals. At the end of the day, you will have to put your foot down and say, “That’s it. We are moving ahead with our web design process, with THIS particular list of requirements.” In most cases, the clients understand.

2.       The Color Combination

Companies like Google are known to obsess over color. Yet, it might not be the right way to go. There is no doubt, color is a super important website design element. In fact, many times, it doesn’t get the credit it deserves and a number of designers do not make the effort to choose the perfect color scheme for a site.

But at the other end of the spectrum are designers who spend a considerable amount of time to pick the right color scheme. In such cases, there is a tendency to lose sight of the main goal of the site and spend time only focusing on a single design element; designers cannot give enough time to other critical design components.

You definitely need to pick the perfect color but, if you obsess about it, you might end up picking the wrong color. For e.g. women don’t like Orange, Gray or Brown, and if you are designing a website that targets women, you need to avoid these colors on your site if you can. But, an inordinate focus on picking the right color might mean that you end up picking these or one of these colors because you over thought the whole process.

3.       Images

Images are super important for a website and critical for its ability to engage visitors and convert them into customers. The problem is that some designers try too hard to choose the ‘perfect’ images for a site, and the marker for perfection is usually images that look good. Well, if you are spending a lot of time deciding whether an image looks good or not, what you will forget to check is whether it is relevant to the site. All good websites have relevant images that enhance their brand messaging. This relevance ensures these images standout, and do their job extremely well.

If you overthink your images, you might just pick the wrong imagery for your site. Or you might choose images, whose size actually impacts the loading speed of the site, thus adversely affecting its usability. All in all, you will pick wrong images that don’t do justice to the site and its objectives.

4.       Nitpicking and Fanatical Attention to Detail

You need to give attention to detail. But the problem is when you nitpick and spend a lot of time reviewing the site, what you’ve accomplished so far and making minuscule changes to the site, even if it is good to go. It seems like you have nothing better to do than to keep thinking about small details of your website and changing them again and again.

Over thinking is the best way to destroy something that looks good and functions well.

 

What can you do to prevent overthinking errors?

1.       Have a clear thought process

When you create a website, have a clear thought process. You should be sure of what you aim to achieve through your site and whom you want to reach out to. You can then build a website that caters to your target audience. You might have a truckload of ideas but must make sure you pick one that ensures all design elements blend seamlessly and work towards achieving website goals.

2.       Don’t be obsessive

Don’t be obsessed with things like colors and layouts. If you like a color combination or a web page layout and you know you’ve kept the psychological and user perspective in mind while choosing a particular color scheme or layout, stick to it.

If you keep on thinking about it, you will just be wasting your time. Let your creative mind and your intuition decide for you what looks best and then get on with other tasks.

Remember, creativity needs a free reign to flourish. If it is allowed to take its own course, without everyone obsessing over it, it will give you better results. Your return on investment will be higher too.

Author Bio:

Kunjal Panchal is a Digital Strategist, having 5+ years of experience in the field of Internet Marketing. She is a social media geek, a complete foodie and enjoys trying varied cuisines. A perfect day for her consists of reading her favorite author with a hot cuppa coffee. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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