21Oct2007

10 Reasons Why Your Web Site Sucks

E-consultancy has an amusing list/rant of top 10 web site annoyances.

Although many of these items have been brought up before, it's never a bad thing to be reminded of what not to do.

While I agree with most of the points raised, I disagree about the use of 'intrusive' advertising such as overlays and interstitials on some sites.

Of course, I would rather that these forms of advertising did not exist.

However, I understand that as people expect content to be provided for free and users increasingly suffer from banner blindness, marketers are having to move to more intrusive forms of advertising in order to be sure that their ads are being seen.

I'd also like to add a couple of my own peeves to the list.

11. Poor Site Search

One method I often use to assess how well a site is built and managed is to try out the search.

If the results number in the hundreds, are poorly presented, and lack relevance then I know that the site owner has not spent much time thinking about the web site's usability.

It's even more of a red flag if the search results page shows a percentage relevancy number for each result — you know, result #4 is 58% relevant while result #5 is only 52% relevant. What does this information actually mean and how is it supposed to be used?!

This was a useless feature when it was introduced 10+ years ago and it remains so today. Get rid of it.

12. Lousy Typography

One of the easiest ways to improve the design and usability of your web site is to have good typography. That's why it's so frustrating when I come across sites that suffer from small text, cramped paragraphs and lists, and hard-to-read text and link colors.

There are so many examples of good typography on the web — MSNBC, The New York Times (funny Stephen Colbert column), Slate, and Time to name just a few — that there's really no excuse for poor typography.

It's also easier than ever to compare fonts and typographic layout than ever.

That's my 2c. Any more pet peeves to add to the list?

Posted on: October 21, 2007 | 9 Comments

9 Comments Posted

I think that you can´t judge every site, this simple...
It´s all about the content, and we must all learn to
design the site around that... Not around our "darlings" or
around the fun stuff...

Long live usability with thought behind it....

Anders Printz - http://printz.good.se - visit for free cake ;)

1. Posted by Anders Printz on October 22, 2007

Graphics, graphics and graphics

2. Posted by Jermayn Parker on October 22, 2007

A good website should always ensure the its attractive. For me, i prefer a clean website which is template color is white. I do not really like a dark and a black website. It look boring...

What do you think about this advertising website: www.tropical-central.org I advertise my company in this website for RM150/year. I choose it because the template design is clean. And very get people boring.

** Blog Admin: Please delete the third post. The url got problems.

3. Posted by smithveg on October 23, 2007

My #1 is definitely inconsistent navigation, when the nav changes or disappears all together from one page to the next

4. Posted by Design Submit on October 23, 2007

I gotta go with the automatic audio as my biggest problem with websites. The worst is when it's really low quality and recorded at a way too high volume... come on, it's not that hard to get people who want to listen to your bs to click on it, save the rest of us the annoyance.

5. Posted by Scottsdale Web Design on October 24, 2007

Heh — I was in a meeting recently where the client wanted audio to play automatically when the site loaded. Fortunately, I was able to make them see reason.

6. Posted by Christian Watson on October 25, 2007

The main problem is not being able to find what you're looking for on a website and over complicating things. Forget all the fancy graphics and "innovative" layouts. First and foremost, your users have got to be able to actually use your website.

7. Posted by Steve on November 06, 2007

I often find myself on sites, maybe coming from Google, and not being able to figure out what the site is about. Sites that have a quick 'about page' or paragraph in a sidebar. Obviously some sites are very obvious, and you can tell from the header ... ie "Web design blog"! but lately I find mysef leaving a lot of sites within seconds because I don't know what the hell the are.

8. Posted by John Braine on November 08, 2007

I agree with the point about small text on sites. This my number one hate....thank god for web 2.0 and all that white space and big text!

It's so refreshing to visit a modern site that is using css web 2.0...

9. Posted by Web Design Fort Myers on December 06, 2007