Everyone has encountered poorly-designed websites at some point. Many mistakes that are made in web design are not just visually unappealing. They are also annoying to the reader. These simple problems can quickly distract a visitor, make them think the site is unprofessional, and turn them off from sticking around or making a purchase.
Poor and Unclear Navigation
Websites should be simple and intuitive for visitors to navigate. There are many examples of common navigation mistakes that are sure to annoy readers. Every page should have a link back to the homepage. Also, every page on the site should have a similar design look and feel. Readers should never wonder if they’ve ended up someplace unexpected after clicking on a link. Visited links should change colors in order for website visitors to be able to keep track of where they’ve been and what they have already seen.
Trying Too Hard
Oftentimes, a simple design is more appealing than bells and whistles. Most people hate to hear music when they go to a new website. This is especially annoying to the visitor if they’re online in a workplace or at night when other people are sleeping. Music is even more annoying when it can’t be easily turned off. Flash intros for the vast majority of websites are an unnecessary hassle as well. Don’t try to get too fancy with fonts, either, because many fonts are not viewable on all of the popular browsers. The most-used fonts might seem boring, but they became the most-used fonts for a reason: they are the easiest to read. Stick with the basics like Arial, Verdana, and Times New Roman.
Not Providing Clear Information
Failing to give website visitors all of the information they need is sure to turn them away, especially if this knowledge has been promised in an attempt to get them to the site. Not listing the price of a product or service being sold upfront is probably the most common example of this. Potential customers should not have to add an item to a shopping cart and get to the payment screen before finding out how much it costs. Sometimes not listing prices in a product list is simply an oversight or honest mistake, but it appears shady to customers. If an advertisement says that a question will be answered on a website to attract visitors, make sure that this information is easily found.
You’re Taking Too Long
Even though high-speed internet has become so popular that many people can barely remember what dial-up was like, it’s still important to have a site that loads quickly and efficiently. There really are quite a few people who still use dial-up internet connections, and they’ll close the window rather than waiting half an hour for a site to load. All images should be optimized for speed. PDF files are another thing that is annoying and takes too long, even with a high-speed connection. It may only be an extra few seconds, but high-speed internet users are used to things being instantaneous and easily grow impatient. PDF files can take longer to scroll and print, as well.
Tags: design, flash, navigation
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March 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
The one thing that always annoys me with the sites that “Try too hard” are their talking adds. It’s fustrating waiting 2 minutes for a site to load, only to be blasted by a add that screams “HELLLOOOO!!!” and you forgot to turn your volume down. Good read, though.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Flash. There are very few designers that can really pull off an ambitious Flash based site and it’s so damn obvious. I’m sick of having to try and navigate awfully designed official movie sites.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Well written. Webmasters sometimes go so far with ads that it makes me impossible to stick on to the site for more than a few seconds. Over-aggressiveness is seen in the form of flash videos with sound that can’t be stopped, ads that take you away from the main page to the ad page, and you have to like hit “Skip this ad” to get to the page you want. desibbrg.com is easily the worst of the lot!! Whew! Okay.. I’ve let it out..
March 21st, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Amen, Amen, and Amen! I get so tired of webmasters and all of there tricks sometimes. To me the most annoying one is the websites with the sound that turns on automatically. I use sound in my blog, but I give people a choice as to whether or not they want to listen to it. I also hate sites with lots of flashing text going on. It’s just distracting to me.
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I agree with all of these mistakes, I’m also one of the so called newbie’s in making websites and I think these are very important things to consider. My site is still not that good but I’m doing my best to fix some glitches. I’m not a programmer and that I think is the main problem for me.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:52 am
There is some brilliant information there. As I was reading that blog I had to laugh to myself, because some of the stuff which is listed I’ve done. Obviously when I was starting out, I’ve learnt from my mistakes this time! One thing I find annoying about some websites is that they have way to many adverts!
April 14th, 2008 at 9:36 am
It really bugs me when people use ALL flash for their website. Flash is so linear and anything you do, page to page, has to be reloaded, which is a pain. I agree with every single thing listed in this article. Music is a giant no no as well.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I agree that flash is annoying — and somewhere I just saw an ad for a toolbar ad-in that will disable flash on websites you go to — so you skip that annoying little demo at the beginning.
The other thing I find irritating is the pop-up surveys that some people put up. It won’t let me get to the information I wanted without filling out the survey. This just makes me abandon the site.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am
Flash is good to work with. But it is not a good programming practise to use it in a commercial website. The server may find it difficult to load it everytime when the site is requested. This will eat up the bandwidth. Also it may be a problem for users like me. I simply close all the demo sections of a site.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 am
These are the common mistakes that newbie designers are doing. They have forgotten to make it more appealing to the visitors since the visitors are the one who should we as a designer consider first in making a design. This is also similar to programming because as a programmer you must consider the people who will use it. Make it user friendly.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I think another poor mistake a web designer makes is using poor color choices in their designs.
Bright vivid colors make your website look like MySpace profiles literally.
Flash can be annoying but I think it is great and professional if you use it in the right way. Flash in the main banner or logo is fine.
And I definately agree that navigation is one of the biggest things. People try to make things too fancy now a days.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I tend to think that music (or those talking ads) is way more annoying than anything else. I use my computer in an area where I don’t want to disturb a lot of people. So those ads that suddenly come on and start talking in loud voices only convince me to NEVER buy their product. I’m not talking about the ones you have to click on or follow a link, but the ones that pop up when you accidentally mouseover them.
I do use headphones a lot, but not all the time.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Its very important to have good content for the readers. Easy to read, useful and fun. Sometimes however websites with lots of content do not have a nice design so it ends up kind of unbalanced and not a pleasing experience for visitors. Some sites care too much about the design, and others do the opposite. What is important is to have a balance of both.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I think too many websites do not use Flash in the right way. If you have the creativity, you can use Flash effectively and the website remains very readable and of course, more interesting for the readers. Other websites care too much about the content and end up with a boring design which is just as bad as a poorly designed over flashed website. It is all about finding the right balance between good content and good design.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I think I agree with everything in this post. Music is incredibly annoying, especially in the middle of the night when you forget to turn your speakers off, and suddenly cheesy musics starts to play, and the next morning the rest of the family is looking at you with “angry eyes,” haha.
Flash is pointless. You can make a beautiful website without it.
What’s most important is easy navigation, readability, and a professional, unique design. Yes, design is just as important as content.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Kyle- I completely agree with you. I despise “talking” ads. The smiley one that yells “Hellooo!” when you accidentally scroll over it is my arch-nemesis in life. =P Things like this end up just being a frustration to visitors and a reason to not “bother” visiting a site… and if visiting a site becomes a bother, then you haven’t done your job very well.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
You need to be sensitive to the needs of other browser users as well. Being a Firefox user, I’ve noticed that one nasty problem with it, is that a PDF will hang it until it fully downloads, when said PDF could’ve been made out of nothing but text.
I’ve also noticed on news sites that they take too damn long to load. I’m NOT going to sit here for 15 minutes just to find out what celebrity is sleeping with which rapper.
Filling it with bells and whistles is just pathetic, I know what day it is, I have a watch on, I know what the weather outside it, and I don’t give two damns about the price of tea in China.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Good point made by Datrz about being aware of how a website loads in browsers other than the ones you use, especially for firefox and IE. When I was new to the cyberspace and was reading on ecommerce and a profitable niche, I lost out on several informative websites due to the excessive time they took to load their content. It’s said that graphics on the websites are good because a lot of us are the visual kind and associate with graphics better and quicker than wading through a bunch of text but too much graphics does more harm to the site than help.
June 12th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I’ve had similar problems but not just in page loading. When I was using Firefox I sometimes encountered sites where buttons didn’t work but they worked on IE. I use Opera now and I get similar problems occasionally. Designers should test their site on popular browsers.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:16 pm
But then the question really is what is considered to be unpleasing to the eye or not considered to be professional as each designer may have different tastes and will not always have sites that appeal to the million of visitors that might go to the site. There are times that some things are less desirable than others but for the most part anyone who designs on a professional level has done this many more times that you might think.