Source: https://moonshotdigital.com/7-common-mistakes-made-luxury-websites/ Author: mOOnshot digital License: All rights reserved (excerpts permitted with attribution) Cite as: mOOnshot digital, "7 Common Mistakes Made By Luxury Websites - mOOnshot digital marketing agency Singapore", https://moonshotdigital.com/7-common-mistakes-made-luxury-websites/ AI-use policy: https://moonshotdigital.com/ai-policy.txt Updated: 2026-05-22 Language: en Archive: true Published: 2015-03-22 Note: Recovered from the Wayback Machine; preserved at the original URL for reference. Luxury websites are usually slick and elegant, but many are failing to deliver the most fundamental requirement: **[first-class user experience](/user-experience-ux-matter/ "User Experience: What Is UX And Why Does It Matter?")**. {[Click to tweet](http://ctt.ec/KBkvI "Click to tweet")} From intruding animations to pages that are frustratingly slow to load, it is paradoxical to think that premium and luxury brands offer such poor online experience. To help you avoid these pitfalls, we analysed the websites of some of the world’s most renown luxury brands including Patek Philippe, Hermès, Versace, Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent and listed **7 common website mistakes that are negatively impacting user experience** {[Click here to tweet this blog post](http://ctt.ec/eUcXx "Click here to tweet this blog post")}: ## Website Mistake #1: Slow Load Times [](http://www.givenchy.com/en/) Page loading time is a key element of any website user experience. A lengthy page load time is an invitation to the visitor to click away. In fact, nearly half of online visitors [expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/ "How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line"), and they tend to abandon a website that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. Unfortunately, slow loading times appear to be a common theme among luxury websites that often perform poorly due to a lack of optimisation. But websites do not need to compromise on speed to accommodate better aesthetic design and all the bells and whistles. Rich graphics and images can be used, but they should always be optimised to ensure great website performances. ## Website Mistake #2: Poor Readability [](https://www.patek.com/en/home) Readability is a crucial component of a website usability. No matter what message you are trying to get across, nothing will get through if the content just isn’t easily visible. Yet, many luxury brands make design choices that are challenging from a user experience perspective, including: - Fancy font styles that may be pretty but are just impossible to decipher; - Tiny font sizes that require magnifying glasses to view properly; - Low contrast colour schemes that make the reading very tiring to the eyes. ## Website Mistake #3: Splash Page & Intruding Animations [](http://www.versace.com/) How often have you been onto a luxury website and were forced to watch an introduction while you were desperately trying to find the ‘skip to home’ button hidden in a small corner of the page? How frustrating is it when you land on a splash page and have to make that extra click to access the content you actually care about? While some may argue that this is an integral part of the immersive luxury brand experience, it should be at the users’ discretion whether or not they view the splash screen promotions or videos. Splash pages are usually graphically rich but often completely unnecessary and can have harmful effects on website performances and search engine rankings. ## Website Mistake #4: Mystery Navigation [](http://www.hermes.com/index_default.html) Up, down, left, right… Where am I? Where have I been? Where can I go next? Navigating through some luxury websites can be overwhelming. Visitors want to access information in the most timely manner. Unfortunately, many luxury websites do not have a clear navigation path and do not incorporate site search. Plus, many luxury brands fail to use the most relevant descriptive terms that are most helpful to their target customer base. Instead, luxury brands use ambiguous names for web pages that do not clearly define what each page features. ## Website Mistake #5: Automatic Sound [](http://www.ysl.com/hk) Imagine that you open a website at the office, in the library or any other quiet public space and suddenly some loud music hits you in full swing. You can’t immediately locate the mute button so you reflexively close the site to make it stop. Sounds familiar? Many luxury brands incorporate background music and videos that autoplay as soon as a visitor arrives on the site. Unfortunately, more often than not, these imposed sounds are intrusive and can be very irritating, especially when blaring out when you least expect it. It’s important to always display a prominent audio control so that users can easily stop the music or change the volume in a hurry. ## Website Mistake #6: Not Optimised For Mobile Devices [](http://restaurantandre.com/) The luxury shopper is more mobile than ever. Providing a [seamless user experience across all devices is thus paramount](/anatomy-great-responsive-website-5-essential-best-practices-multi-screen-consumer/ "The Anatomy Of A Great Responsive Website: 5 Essential Best Practices For The Multi-Screen Consumer") if luxury brands want to reach consumers in all the moments that matter. But surprisingly, many websites are still not optimised for mobile devices. Note that [Google officially announced](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.sg/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html "Finding more mobile-friendly search results") that starting 21st April 2015, they will rank [mobile-friendly](/googles-mobile-search-results-now-highlight-mobile-friendly-websites/ "Google’s Mobile Search Results Now Highlight Mobile-Friendly Websites") websites higher in their search results. ## Website Mistake #7: Not Optimised For Search Engines The correct [technical setup of a website is a key element of SEO](/basic-seo-part-1-best-practices/ "Basic SEO (Part 1): Best Practices"). Unfortunately, luxury brands often ignore SEO best practices and as a result, search engines are often unable to index all their pages. SEO is an untapped opportunity for luxury brands. Luxury shoppers are indeed increasingly relying on Google search and social networks to find products, engage with their favourite luxury brands wherever and whenever they want, and make their purchase. ## The Delicate Balancing Act Web design trends come and go, but one thing will remain constant and that’s the need for a user-friendly and functional website. While we understand that high-end brands strive to maintain an air of exclusivity that feels aspirational and not overly accessible, this should not be done at the detriment of a [great user experience](/user-experience-ux-matter/ "User Experience: What Is UX And Why Does It Matter?"). There’s no doubt that exquisite aesthetic design is key when developing a luxury website. But much like the in-store luxury experience, which is crafted with meticulous attention to detail and centered around the every need of the discerning customer, luxury websites must mirror this thoughtfulness and find the right balance between luxury design and great usability and functionality. [Contact our team at mOOnshot digital](/contact/ "Contact our team at mOOnshot digital") if you need help developing your user-friendly fully responsive website.