Top 5 Biggest No-No’s in Web Design Today

[box type=”info”] This information may be out of date.[/box]

Web design can be a highly subjective thing. Everyone has their own opinion about how things should look and function on a website. Web designers must try their best to bridge the gap between a client’s expectations and what will actually work in practice, but there are a handful of major no-no’s that we should all work together to eradicate from the internet completely, and awareness is half the battle.

The most important thing you can do is build your site for its users, making it easy for them to find what they’re looking for; be it contact information, company news, products to buy, or any other identified objective. So in the spirit of awareness, here are the 5 biggest no-no’s in current website design (in no particular order).

1. Splash Pages & Loading Pages

Exception: Some splash pages have a legitimate function, like language selection for international sites.

Your website shouldn’t be a commercial. People hate commercials.

Try to avoid the urge to bludgeon your users with self indulgent intro pages. Bouncing, swishing graphics and flashy ‘splash’ pages only add one more step between your users and what they’re after.

15 years ago, back when we weren’t really tracking conversions, splash pages were all the rage. As a user, you’d probably go through the same emotions in 3 visits that the collective internet has gone through since ’95. You’d arrive at a site for the first time to be greeted with a colourful intro page filled with swooshing graphics and dancing menu items and some catchy Muzack. “What a production!” you might think.

The next time you visit, and see the same thing, you look for a “skip into” link (if there is one). The next time, you may debate even going to the site at all.

Imagine if you had to deal with this every time you went to Facebook! or Google!

I understand, as a business owner you want your website to be cool and different, and it should! But the conventions that have been established on the web over the past decade are there for a reason: To simplify and streamline the whole process of getting information, for everyone!

Here are a few examples of splash pages in action:

• http://www.senioradultmusic.com Looks like they’ve removed theirs!
• http://iccmworldwide.org/index2.htm

The other type of intro page is the “please wait 5 minutes while our website loads.” If your site has to show a progress bar while loading, you’re probably doing it wrong. You’re also probably using flash…

2. Flash Websites & Unnecessary Interactivity

Unless you’re talking about YouTube, which uses flash as a video format, the term ‘flash websites’ borders on dirty word amongst the web-savvy, for numerous reasons. Here are a few:

• Search engines don’t get along well with flash. And they’re not inviting it to their birthday party.
• Flash is clunky (hence the aforementioned loading pages).
• Flash websites won’t even load on a huge number of mobile devices – most notably, Apple’s iPhone. Even if you’re using a broswer on your pc, you may need to download a flash player to see these sites. Remember that part about making it easy?

I dare you to try and even get into this website: http://www.fastlanestudios.net

Flash websites often create numerous extra barriers for users to get what they’re looking for, mostly due to unconventional architecture, or navigation that makes you actively look around and hover over images to find things.

It is imperative to have a persistent navigation bar on every page of your site that will facilitate getting around for your users. If they come in on a blog post (and, god forbid, bypass your intro screen detailing your website’s instructions) they should be able to get to your contact information, home page, other blog posts, etc. easily and with minimal brain work.

Simply having a navigation, however, isn’t a smoking gun. Nav’s can also be plagued with self indulgence and bad practice…

3. Vague or Difficult to Use Navigation (aka Mystery Meat Navigation)

You may have the urge to label your site navigation with vague terms that metaphorically represent what’s on that page. Please don’t.

No matter how clever your labels are, they are not what I’m looking for.

• I’m looking for Contact us, not engage
• I’m looking for Portfolio, not expressions

Another common method of artistic expression with site navigation is using images or (gasp) flash to create moving, dynamic menus. Often these one’s produce infuriating results.

Check out a few of these Mystery Meat Nav’s:

• Hover over the “channels”  menu and  see where you end up: http://threeminds.organic.com
• I appologize in advance for any anxiety cause by this one: http://nomek.net  This site appears to have been misplaced :p
• Mouse over the.. eggs?  http://www.zincbistroaz.com
• I’m open to suggestions on how to enter this site: http://www.rushofbloodtothehead.co.uk

Another thing to avoid in your navigation is the use of images…

4. Using Graphics for Text

This one’s simple.

• Where do you look for answers, products, or services online? Search engines.
• What do search engines use to determine the relevance of your site? Text.
• What happens if search engines can’t read any of the text on your site? Nothing. And your site will forever be ignored, by everyone.

You don’t have to be a search engine expert to use live text to describe things on your site. SEO can do a lot to bring in traffic to a website, but by simply using on-page text instead of images you’re 50% of the way there!

A simple way to check if your text is “live” or trapped in images is to try and highlight it, copy it and paste it!

PRO TIP: Find what you you’re looking for quickly on any web page by pressing Ctrl+F (Command+F on a mac) and searching for words on that page. This of course only works on sites with live text – but it can be an enormous time-saver on really busy, messy, over-cluttered websites…

5. Clutter, Chaos, & Poor Readability

This one is making a pretty graceful departure from the web, with sites like eBay, Facebook, Amazon, etc. changing what people expect to see.

The advent of contant-managed, dynamic websites has allowed for sorting and organization of information to keep the important stuff front and centre. More and more I find that the expectation is shifting towards clean and streamlined web design. This is wonderful, but there are still remnants of the 90’s kicking around and the occasional new website that try’s to clutter you screen with more information and images that you could digest in a week.

Just for fun, here are a few of such websites.

• http://www.arngren.net
• http://art.yale.edu
• http://www.gamequarium.com
• http://www.restaurantguideatlanta.com

A Few Dishonorable Mentions

• Burying your contact info or location more than one click away from the home page
• Broken links
• Music that plays automatically

Hopefully we can all continue to work towards a more standardized, usable web. For more information on how to create an attractive and unique, but still highly usable website – without any No-No’s – contact Nick Pierno today!