Website Sins

There are many things that web designers can do to annoy their visitors. These are the ones we find the most irritating.

Splash screens & Flash intros

These are pages that visitors first encounter when viewing a site. Visitors come to your site for information, and anything which hinders them should be avoided.

When confronted with Flash intros, visitors will generally look for the ‘skip intro’ link and not spend their time watching an animation which tells them nothing about your product or service.

Unreadable text / poor colour scheme

If visitors to your site find it difficult to read the text, they will go elsewhere.

Follow these rules to make sure you get it right:

• Make your default font size large enough for most people to read comfortably
• Design the site to allow visitors to change the font size using browser controls
• Make sure that there is a high contrast between the background colour and the text. Also, don’t choose clashing colours, e.g. red text on a green background.

Missing or hidden contact information

There are a surprising amount of e-commerce sites where contact information is either missing or is difficult to find. Your product or service may be fantastic, but visitors won’t spend long trying to find out how to get in touch.

Additionally, potential customers are much more likely to do business with you if they can see a bricks and mortar address, not just a phone number or e-mail address.

Too much animation

Animation should be used sparingly. Your visitors’ eyes will be drawn to anything moving on the page. This is clearly what you want for an advert, but what about the rest of the content on the page? You visitors are more likely to miss the message you are trying to get across.

‘Under Construction’ areas

If a section of your site isn’t ready, don’t display it. Why advertise that fact that you haven’t finished the site? Most people won’t check back at a later date, they will simply find what they want elsewhere.

Disabled ‘back’ button

One of the most frustrating things a site designer can do is to break the ‘back’ button on the browser.

This can be done in a variety of ways, but the most common occurs when one page redirects to another. When the ‘back’ button is clicked, the browser is sent back to the redirecting page resulting in the visitor ending up back on the page they wanted to go back from.

Browser issues

Although it can be tricky to design a site that displays correctly in the most popular browsers, it is possible if you keep it simple. Visitors should not be forced to use a particular browser to view a site.