Why your website looks unfinished
The small signs customers notice, even when they can’t name them.
Finercraft3 min read
The short version
“Professional” isn’t a style. It’s consistency: the same gaps between the same things, a few text sizes used the same way, one set of colours, everything lined up. Customers notice when it’s missing, even when they can’t say why.
Your website works, but customers hesitate. Usually nothing is broken. Each page was simply made on its own, so each page followed its own rules, and the small differences add up to a feeling of “not quite finished”.
The gaps are all different sizes
The space between a heading and its text changes from section to section. Customers can’t name it, but they feel the page is unsteady.
- Check it: scroll your homepage slowly. Do similar things have similar gaps?
Headings change size from page to page
The same kind of heading is large on one page and small on the next. Readers lose their place.
- Check it: open three pages side by side. Do the main headings match?
Things almost line up
Text, photos and buttons sit a few pixels off from each other. Almost aligned looks less careful than clearly different.
- Check it: look down the left edge of a page. Does everything start on the same line?
Nothing is broken. Everything drifts.
Too many colours
Several greys and blues that are nearly the same, used for the same jobs. A small, steady set of colours reads as a brand.
- Check it: count the colours used for buttons and links. More than two or three is a sign.
It only looks right on one screen
It was checked on the computer it was made on, not on the phone most customers use.
- Check it: open it on your own phone and on a friend’s.
The pages nobody wrote
Placeholder text, a page with one sentence, a “coming soon” that never came.
- Check it: visit every page in your menu and footer.
It can’t be used without a mouse
Some customers use a keyboard or a screen reader. If they can’t reach a button, they can’t contact you.
- Check it: press Tab on your computer and see whether you can reach everything, in order.
The translation is there, but the layout isn’t ready for it
Words in another language run longer or shorter, and the layout breaks around them.
- Check it: if your website has another language, switch to it and look at the menu and buttons.
Underneath the look
When these signs show up, the cause is usually that the website was never given one set of rules to follow. Fixing it means writing those rules down once (spacing, text sizes, colours, a grid) and using them everywhere.
Send us your website’s address. We’ll look at it against these eight signs and the Finercraft Standard, and tell you honestly what we found, even when the answer is “this is fine, leave it.”
Tell us what you need.
We’ll talk it through, then send your scope and price, in writing, free. We reply within one working day.