Web Design Mistakes That Throw People Off
- By Sammy Kirkland
- Published 02/7/2011
- Web Development
- Unrated
People usually make some mistakes that repel users rather than retain them such that users are likely to move on to some other site as soon as they visit your website.
The following is a list of such bad practices.
1. Auto loading music on the website
Unless your website specializes on selling or advertising a certain genre of music, assuming that the visitors will definitely like it is being a little presumptuous. What if the visitor is in a quiet office and accidentally left the volume high, and your site audio happens to be some loud rock. Your visitors should be able to choose whether they want the sound on or off.
2. A background that doesn't go with the text
Now what is the point of having text on a page when it is unreadable? You can't have white font color against a light yellow background, or pink text against a light background. Always make sure that the text stands out and is readable against whatever background color or background image you use.
3. Too much flash and images
Using flash is a very effective way at having an aesthetically pleasing website. However you should always take into consideration the site visitors without fast Internet or people accessing via low power mobile phones. Again, art is a very tricky thing. There is no one single piece of art that is pleasant to everyone. So keep the graphics to a minimum. Creating a HTML version of the site can help users with low Internet speeds and also give you a chance to optimize the site for search engines.
4. Intrusive pop-up windows and graphics
Pop-ups are rather annoying especially if they are adverts or one of those "WIN WIN WIN" with bright colors and sometimes R18 images. However, nowadays most browsers are preloaded with pop-up blockers that users must disable for trusted sites only; so your message probably won't go through this way. Some users feel insecure on sites with pop-ups and very likely to close them as soon as they spot one.
5. Broken links
It is very frustrating to a site visitor when he clicks a link on your site and lands to a "page not found" page. It gives the impression that the website manager gave up on the site a long time ago and that the content may not be up to date.
6. Difficult to navigate
The website should be made such that it as easy to navigate for the tech savvy as it is for the only partially literate grandmas. Content should be well classified so that visitors can get to what they want without doing any guesswork.
7. Long paragraphs and sentences
Websites are not like really expensive books you buy from a bookshop. When people get to a via search engine, they don't get there to read they get there to skim. They want to find out how close the content on that site is relevant to what they were looking for. So if your paragraphs are 4 sentences or more with very long complex sentences at the beginning, they will probably never know. They simply jump on to the next site.
These are some of the mistakes designers make, but list of all of them is endless. Remember to always ask yourself if you'd like that on a given site and if everyone else will also not mind it.
The following is a list of such bad practices.
1. Auto loading music on the website
Unless your website specializes on selling or advertising a certain genre of music, assuming that the visitors will definitely like it is being a little presumptuous. What if the visitor is in a quiet office and accidentally left the volume high, and your site audio happens to be some loud rock. Your visitors should be able to choose whether they want the sound on or off.
2. A background that doesn't go with the text
Now what is the point of having text on a page when it is unreadable? You can't have white font color against a light yellow background, or pink text against a light background. Always make sure that the text stands out and is readable against whatever background color or background image you use.
3. Too much flash and images
Using flash is a very effective way at having an aesthetically pleasing website. However you should always take into consideration the site visitors without fast Internet or people accessing via low power mobile phones. Again, art is a very tricky thing. There is no one single piece of art that is pleasant to everyone. So keep the graphics to a minimum. Creating a HTML version of the site can help users with low Internet speeds and also give you a chance to optimize the site for search engines.
4. Intrusive pop-up windows and graphics
Pop-ups are rather annoying especially if they are adverts or one of those "WIN WIN WIN" with bright colors and sometimes R18 images. However, nowadays most browsers are preloaded with pop-up blockers that users must disable for trusted sites only; so your message probably won't go through this way. Some users feel insecure on sites with pop-ups and very likely to close them as soon as they spot one.
5. Broken links
It is very frustrating to a site visitor when he clicks a link on your site and lands to a "page not found" page. It gives the impression that the website manager gave up on the site a long time ago and that the content may not be up to date.
6. Difficult to navigate
The website should be made such that it as easy to navigate for the tech savvy as it is for the only partially literate grandmas. Content should be well classified so that visitors can get to what they want without doing any guesswork.
7. Long paragraphs and sentences
Websites are not like really expensive books you buy from a bookshop. When people get to a via search engine, they don't get there to read they get there to skim. They want to find out how close the content on that site is relevant to what they were looking for. So if your paragraphs are 4 sentences or more with very long complex sentences at the beginning, they will probably never know. They simply jump on to the next site.
These are some of the mistakes designers make, but list of all of them is endless. Remember to always ask yourself if you'd like that on a given site and if everyone else will also not mind it.
Sammy Kirkland
Sammy Kirkland in website development, programming and design. If you'd like to know more about our services, please visit our x-cart web design page and our wonderful cs-cart development page.
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