9 Things To Avoid In Your Web Site
Two essential things many amateur web designers/developers tend to miss these days:
- Support for web standards/conventions.
- Common sense.
The first might not interfere with the visitors’ experience (it’s still important though), but the second, which these 9 things I’m going to mention belong to, impacts it directly. Even if you completely ignore number 1, you could still apply common sense with little to no effort:
1. Sounds
As far as I know, no one wants anything to interfere with what they’re doing or listening to while visiting web sites. Sounds of any kind will definitely add to your site’s “coolness” factor, but the negative number may vary depending on how annoying the sound is.
2. Splash pages
What’s the point of splash pages anyway? You could still tell what a site is if you went directly into its home page. And warm welcomes aren’t necessary if they require an extra click.
3. Low contrast
Always make sure that your content is readable by providing enough contrast. This is obviously … well…. obvious, but sometimes your monitor’s settings will fool you into thinking that what you’re seeing is what everyone else does. Double check your layout under different monitor settings and on different monitors if possible just to make sure.
4. Large header image
This seems like one of the latest design trends in blogs. This isn’t considered a problem until the header image is more than 250px in height, because you basically start wasting space and pushing your content to the bottom (which is far more valuable than those fancy graphics). This decreases the area visible to visitors when they visit any page, which means more scrolling for them, and might eventually lead to frustration.
5. Links that open in a new window
Trust me, if your visitor wants to stay in your web site, he/she will either open links in a new window, or open them in the same window and return to your site later using the “back” button. Either way, this should always be the visitor’s choice, not the site owner’s.
You can read more about this in SitePoint’s article.
6. Unnecessary Animations
By unnecessary animations I mean any animation that doesn’t notify visitors about something important they should notice (an error message, a “loading” message..etc). Animations will distract visitors and draw their attention to them, so don’t use them unless you really need to.
7. Pages coming soon
Avoid those “coming soon” or “under construction” pages at all costs. They don’t hype, they disappoint. More than one page of this kind is even frustrating. If you really need to tell your visitors about an upcoming page, then do it in the news or blog page. No wasted clicks, no bad surprises.
8. Unconventional text formatting
Strike-through’s (like this) are used on any text that you want to delete in an update (to avoid confusing your readers), not link hovers, not anything else. Smaller headings are supposed to be grouped under a bigger heading. Bold is mostly used for emphasis. Double quotes cannot be replaced by parentheses no matter what.
The number of writers who come up with their own text formatting is amazing. Fortunately, most of them write for their personal blogs/diaries only.
9. Google’s Adsense
Well, using Google Adsense ads is definitely not wrong, but it does make your site look cheap, especially if you try to make them look like part of your site to get inaccurate clicks. Value your visitors more than this kind of ads, and advertisers will start paying you sooner than you think.
Those were 9 things I spot often in web sites, and as you can see, they’re pretty easy to avoid.
Did I miss any more common issues?
Interesting you pointed out Adsense - what about other forms of online advertising? don’t they also cheapen the look of the site overall?
And even if so, what of monetizing a website? Would you be more inclined to suggest micropatronage, as Kottke tried a year or so ago?
I’ve managed to avoid ads on my site entirely since its launch more than a year ago, but a few costs are starting to mount. I’m just curious - what sort of ad, if any, is something that wouldn’t make this list?
We decided to not run Adsense, not because it cheapens the overall look but because we felt we didn’t need to.
Instead we developed our own ad systems, the first of which is: www.traveltag.it
The problem with Adsense is that so many people (driven by greed) have joined the program and started including ads all over their pages. Some even put three ads close/next to each other in every page.
This is why visitors mostly get the this-website-looks-cheap feeling whenever they visit a web site with an adsense ad(s) (this is not limited to adsense only, but also other text ads that look like adsense).
Even the popular copywriter Brian Clark realized this and decided to remove adsense ads from his posts.
Does advertising itself cheapens the look of the site? not if:
1. The ads don’t look as if they’re part of the content, nor placed in an obtrusive fashion. You wouldn’t want to disappoint, frustrate or annoy your visitors.
2. The owner of a site can’t cover the costs of running it.
3. And the site is offering valuable information/service(s) for free.
Micropatronage is a different story: most of the time visitors are not bothered by donation links (I’ve never seen anyone complaining). If they’re not interested, they’ll just ignore them.
If you’re putting efforts into your site, and providing valuable contents and/or service(s), your returning visitors will gradually start supporting you to keep the site running, and you might end up with more money then all these ads would bring
Well put Mashhoor, I agree totally with those views, especially the part about greed, this does seem to be the case in most travel oriented blogs I’ve seen.
I think the Adsense site said something along the lines of: Ask yourself if your site would exist without Adsense. We thought about it and the answer was still ‘yes’. Why? Because we have a long term goal and Holiday Pad is the start of that journey.
I just wish more people running blogs would ask themselves that same question: would it exist without Adsense?
We actually got refused entry to a blog directory on the grounds our blog was too commercial. At the time we didn’t even have our ad system up andd running. When I looked at other blogs in the directory, guess what?
Yep, they were all running Adsense!
I believe they do know their web sites don’t actually need the ads, but they still want the extra money.
How many people have you met who wanted to “make money online”? I guess the thought of cash-generating-ads is just too tempting for them to ignore.
A nice list of things that do annoy me a lot. I really dislike the use of Flash and other things to create a multimedia presentation as the first thing you hit. Flash etc have their purpose but don’t make your website depend upon it. It is great for streaming media that is ‘requested’ (ie Youtube) and other specific dynamic information, but that’s about it.
I especially dislike those websites that use so much Flash that only a very modern PC will be able to function with it. There are quite a lot of users still browsing the web with very modest hardware.
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I agree. There are also those who surf the web using their mobile phones often (like myself).
Sometimes I wonder if this kind of designers (who rely on flash) realize that the most important thing in a web site is its contents, not its look. If the contents aren’t accessible, then the site is worthless.
Well done Mash, i agree with the adsense thing, especially those that ‘over use’ it.
Anywayz when are you making this WP theme available to the public? haha
Perhaps after I design a newer one.
But thanks for praising my skills indirectly.
Excellent points. I really dislike Flash sites which ofter have splash screen and are loaded with animations.
I think AdSense is okay in moderation. However, webmasters get the AdSense buzz, more ads = more money, and a site becomes bloated with them.
You should have included browser sniffing. I hate it when you get a message saying your browser is not supported. Admittedly, it’s not so common but it is annoying.
Yes, sites that sniff their visitors’ browsers for unsupported browsers are indeed annoying, but it’s not common (as we agree).
What’s worse are sites that force you to use a specific browser AND screen resolution to view it properly. Fortunately, these sites aren’t common either.
WS
Thanks for this article,It is useful,It seems you have good experience,May you write about where we better use AJAX
Thank you Hossein.
I’ll consider writing about that in the near future.
When I look for quality in a web site I want to see content, usability, accessibility and search engine friendliness.
I’m not keen on over doing it on the graphics although I do appreciate the aesthetic side.
Where Adsense is concerned I used to feel pretty much the same about it as a lot of people who’ve commented on the subject here. But ultimately a business is a business, and adsense is revenue. It also has unexpected uses - I notice on my web accessibility pages, that some of the adsense ads have a habit of supporting my point about legal requirements for web accessibility in the UK - nice when these ads can actually be used to lend authority to a point you are making. Mainly though, it doesn’t cost anything to put some ads up and the revenue can be used contribute towards a bit of extra-curricula team building.
Strange how when many of the poor practices mentioned can seriously affect usability, navigability and even search engine visibility that most people picked on Adsense as the bad egg.
if you forgot every thing about web design, do not forget the basic rule “Do not Make me think!” , as said in the nice book with the same title ….