Examples of Poor Website Design
There's no such thing as a perfectly designed website - or a finished website. However, there are common sense guidelines that should be followed in every web page design. Here are some common mistakes:
- Flash Animation:
Huge Flash animations may impress clients but serve to frustrate (splash pages) and irritate (internal pages) visitors. They are search engine UNfriendly. Why bother to put a huge Flash animation as the home page and then add 'Skip Flash'? Using a Flash animation as the home page is like slamming the door on your visitor - neglecting to put a 'Skip' link is kicking him in the privates before you do it.
- GIF Animations:
While we have to tolerate banner ads, the days of the rotating email and flapping flag are surely numbered.
- Massive graphics:
Almost full page in many instances. Again, impressive to clients but many visitors will not bother to see your second page!
- Poor Graphics Palette:
Many websites still use huge swathes of lurid colour. Apart from being a strain on the eye after the fifth page, its difficult to focus the eye on your items of real interest.
- Poor Navigation:
Navigation is critical yet in the stampede to squeeze more and more into each page, navigation cues are becoming ambiguous and redundant. A visitor to a page he has seen three times already is not a happy camper.
- Printing Woes:
Most designers design for the popular 800 x 600 pixel screens. However, the menu is still on the left which means that when printed, the visitor gets the full menu and half the content. Right menus mean that doesn't happen and also when the page changes, the cursor is close to the scrollbar if it is needed rather than being dragged across the screen.
- Inkjet Cartridge Drainers:
People complain about the price of cartridges but many websites still have thin, spidery text on dark backgrounds. Visitors don't want to run out of ink on the third page.
- Liquid Pages:
Basically left and right elements of fixed width with a middle - the content - that fills the gap. Fine and readable on 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 screens but not on 1248 x 1024 screens or above. This obsession with the 'cinerama' page effect means that at high screen resolutions, paragraphs become single lines of text and almost illegible instead around 12 words wide.
- Execrable Content:
Regardless of any shortcomings above, this is the worst offence. Mission Statements, technical gobbledygook, buzzwords - how many designers actually think about their visitors? Courses in good grammar, plain English and general communication are what is needed in bucketfuls. Plus a qualification in page layout.
- Search and Ye Shall Find:
Not likely. Many websites do not have a single item of code that would help a search engine.
- Code Bloat:
Designers still use WYSIWYG editors - largely because colleges love them to get students going quickly. They often produce huge amounts of extraneous code that confounds search engines and slows pages down.
- Frames:
Have their uses but should be avoided if at all possible. Search engines hate them.
