Web Design Mistakes

Aug 30 2009

The common web design mistakes of all times

General Page/ Site Attributes

Pages that are ‘under construction’. Why?
Pages that scroll horizontally. Stick to 1024 resolution
Pages that use frames. It’s harmful to your Search Engine ranking
Auto-play sounds. If you have to use sound, let the user control it.
Too many animations, non-stop looping animations, blinking texts etc
Splash/ Intro pages. If you have to use them, make sure you have a ‘skip intro’
Failure to check cross-browser consistencies.
Reliance on e-mail links as against using a form. Most of the users would not have had an Email program configured
Opening up too many new windows. Instead, have a better navigational structure
Asking for a sign up/ registration when it is not actually necessary. Why waste his time?
Auto subscribing your visitor to your newsletter/ email list without his/ her consent
Using pop ups. There are too many pop up blockers out there.

Page title and tags

People forget to add the most important ‘title’ to their pages (A search of the keyword ‘untitled document’ on google fetched 44 million pages! You can try this out yourself.)
And when they do, they give the same title and meta tags for all the pages. Title all the pages with a ‘unique’ and descriptive title and other meta tags. This is extremely important for higher search engine rankings.

Site Navigation

Unclear, badly structured navigation. You can easily get lost on 3 out of 4 sites you see around. Important pages are tucked way down. Most sites do not clearly inform the visitor as to where she or he is! Some pages open in a new window without navigation/ links.
Using drop down navigation unnecessarily. Most sites use Java Script navigation while they have all the space to keep them open. For example, if you offer 5 services, why hide them under a drop down menu. Keep the navigation simple and consistent. Even if you are using images/ Flash/ JS for the menu, make sure to add HTML links on all pages.
Using only image/ Flash navigation. Use text navigation cause some people switch off images while browsing the web.
Not declaring explicitly what you are linking to, especially when you are linking to PDF/ Word documents
Not providing anchor text to links
Not including Alt and title attributes to images
Inconspicuous links. Make your links conspicuous in a different color and preferably underline them. Try not to underline the regular text. Make sure to change color of the visited links

Content

Useless, bad quality, outdated content is the most common and tragic mistake.
Typos and grammatical mistakes can cost you dear.
Very long or short pages, orphaned pages, alien pages too are very common.
Content that cannot be scanned easily. Make sure that the content is scan able. Use Bullet points, headers, sub headers, lists. Anything that will help the reader filter what he is looking for.
Not including your contact details or making it difficult to find
Not having a site search feature on a large website

Design