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Lousy Navigation
When someone visits your site, ask yourself "Can they navigate well"? All to often we visit sites with poor navigation and wonder where to go? The biggest Culprits, links via images or navigation bars. Mystery Links are so frustrating to the viewer that most give up within a few minutes. Yes, It's hard to put enough information on a small image or table cell, but just a key word or two is better than nothing at all. Wouldn't you rather wait for a slightly larger image to download than try to guess where the link will take you? Obviously you don't want to inflict large linked images all over the place, but try using a text link (say at the bottom). At times it may seem redundant, but it you have navigation that is too small to read, can't be read by a browser or is confusing, a text link somewhere else on the page might be the fix!
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Lousy Grammar
This is a no-brainer with all the programs that offer spell check. We all are guilty of adding extra spaces, forgetting periods or the occasional misspelled word, but If your whole page consist of countless typos it's just a shame; Not only does it look very unprofessional, but it will probably cost you in the long-run. Take the time to use your spell check, and if the program doesn't offer one, copy and paste into one that does.
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Under Construction!
Please, this is just silly! Offer your viewers something, anything besides goofy animations of someone sawing or hammering. You have to give them some idea of why they should bother coming back in two weeks or whenever! If you have a product or a service that you know will benefit someone, don't tease them, tell them. Most would much rather see a brief explanation of what is to come and a simple apology that the page/site is not yet completed.
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Countless Plug-ins, Fancy Gadgets/ Slow Page Loading?
We all want a site that is up-to-date with the latest technology and the best graphics, but you need to draw a line somewhere! A site that requires to many plug-ins to display properly is just plain annoying. What about Joe Average User, he doesn't always know what's going on and may not want to download a plug-in that turns out to be a total waste of his time. If you can do what you need to do in good ole' HTML, then do that. If your page takes forever to load due to too many ads, plug-ins, Java, images, SSI, whatever, you will be the looser. Obviously you can not accommodate every unlucky soul with slow internet and a browser older than dirt, but you should keep them partially in mind. Here are 3 simple tips.
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Tables & Layers with CSS: A great way to add pizzazz to your site without inflicting long downloads from fancy navigation images and Java menus. Both tables & layers can be manipulated by adding behaviors and styles yet still look just like real images. Modern Browsers these days like the use of style sheets (CSS) and they can form your site's design nice and tidy. Even if your browser doesn't support every style or behavior it will most likely degrade easily.
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Pop-up windows via a link: We stress a link because it's annoying if the pop-up enters automatically. Small windows via a link is a great way to add more information without causing download time to be unbearable. It keeps the user in control of what they need, and keeps your page smaller.
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Image quality: Unless you deal in a business that absolutely must have images at 100 % quality, like say professional photography, lower your quality a degree or two. It's really hard to differentiate between 97 % and 100 %. It may not seem like a big difference, but when you add them all up, it can change download time dramatically!
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Never Updating/Validating & Broken Links
Try searching from Google and you'll be amazed as to how many sites are poorly if not ever updated. If you want viewers or potential clients to return, give them an incentive; Something to look forward to like an updated page, a new offer or product. If the information you have on your site is not valid and links are consistently broken, people will not trust you. If they believe that you rarely update chances are they will find another site that gives them what they need, safely, accurately and reliably.
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The Never Ending Page
If you must have a page that is long such as a faq's, questionnaire, test, journal or so on... do everyone a favor and provide access to the top with a bookmark link. Visitors will grow quickly tiresome and are generally overwhelmed if your page is too long. Do not try to cram enough information for three pages into one (or make the print smaller). If you have a lot to present, spread it out between several pages. Users are much more refreshed with each new page and in some cases gain an elevated sense of accomplishment.
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Text, To Small To Read!
At times we have been just as guilty as anyone out there and in some situations it's unavoidable. BUT as we (humans) get older the majority can not see print (text) smaller than 10 pixels and in fact 11 is even better. It's just to hard on our eyes and it's really not good for anyone.
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Visit My Sponsor, or Vote For Me First
WOW, what else can you say about this besides "bad". How is anyone to visit your sponsor to benefit you when your site may not be what they need? Plus, if your sponsor's site is down, well there goes that. If you want a vote or need people to visit your sponsor, have a place on your sidebar or the bottom explaining how it helps keep your site up-to-date while keeping costs down. Tell them it only benefits them in the process, this way they feel like they have control and not as if their being forced to comply. It really is like asking someone to rate a car's performance, yet they haven't taken it for a test drive; This just doesn't make any sense!
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How are they to contact you?
It never ceases to amaze us that even large companies make this very large mistake. This should be priority number one when putting links on your site. "A clearly visible link to contact you is a web-site must" Even small web-sites should have some way for the viewer to contact the moderator or webmaster. If your worried about e-mail harvesters and unsolicited mail we suggest getting some sort of anti-spam software and using scripts that have harvest protection. Viewers need to know they're important and someone is there answer all their questions.
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Advertisements Here, There & Everywhere!
OK, here we are at the end and we saved the best for last. This probably more than all the others combined is the most frustrating and treacherous thing you can do to a user and it applies to every web site.
Advertisements flying across your viewer's screen and in every nook and cranny is just plain bad; Just as the trickery of pop-up ads when a user clicks a link. It looks gaudy and resembles desperation. We know first hand that web-site maintenance can be expensive, but so is loosing viewers or potential clients! Get a script that alternates Ads for you. Simple images or text links are far easier to digest than pages that load poorly because of advertisements. And for the user who is still on dial up, having too many can slow down their computer tremendously, especially if the format is flash or streaming video.
Well folks that's it! We could go on an on, but these 10 seem to be something we observe most while viewing countless web pages and numerous forums. These statements are not intended to be the absolute bottom-line and we are in no way claiming to be experts. If you're offended, we are sorry. You are not a bad person or lousy designer if some of these are found on your site. However, if your site is guilty of all of these, this is a simple guide to help you re-evaluate it. We wish you the best of luck!
