If you have any of these on your website or you have built websites for other people that include some of these ‘No-No’s’ then don’t feel too bad. We all make mistakes and it’s only my opinion right?
1. Flash In The Pan
Pan being a slang term for toilet – as that’s where it belongs. Okay, maybe not all use of Flash but certainly
Flash introduction pages. What a nightmare they are – ever visited a site where you positively revelled in the fact you got to watch an intro that could win the animation Oscars? No, though not. Me neither.
2. “You’ve Been Framed!”
Ouch! You spent how much on a website? And it’s been created in Frames? You do know that this means search engines won’t be able to ‘read’ any of the content of your pages? Hmmm. Nasty.
Frames is the coding method whereby instead of having separate web pages that together make up your website you instead have an all-encompassing frame into which the different elements of content are dropped.
If they’re built well Frames sites often look exactly the same as normal, healthy websites – but the really grim ones have around 59 scroll bars dotted around the place. Usually one scrollbar for every dimension which exists only in the mind of their warped creators…
3. Can You Read In Pictures?
You know those websites where absolutely everything is an image? Even the ‘text’ on the homepage has actually been created in an art package and although the edges look really smooth and you and I might be able to read it – search engines don’t stand a chance.
To you and I the homepage reads:
“Welcome to XYZ Design – the home of intellectually stimulating post-modern e-design where creativity fuses with knowledge transmutation to …”
To the search engines the homepage reads:
“.”
Pictures look good. Use text for words and images for pictures. You think I’m joking here?
Put Yourself In The Picture
4. “Catch Me If You Can!”
Quite often I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. I have a recurring nightmare where I’m on a website and all I want to do is click on the ‘Contact’ page. But I can’t because whenever I move my mouse cursor towards the navigation bar at the top of the page it starts spinning from left to right like a never-ending one-arm bandit that’s been knocked on its side.
If you see a website like this – please send me the address as I’m in the process of building a rather large black hole from which they will never escape to torment me again…
5. Compulsory Hallucinogenics
You know the score – you land on a website and you’re positively forced to take some rather dubious looking mushrooms. Before you know what’s happened everything’s gone weird and your cursor is blurring across the screen. Oh yes – you know what I mean.
Your cursor is actually leaving a trail of blurriness behind in its wake. Is this the 1960s? Is this Woodstock maan? No!!! This is a bad web design idea. Don’t do it!
6. “Don’t I Know You?”
You land on a website that you’ve never visited before and yet there is something strangely familiar about it. Yet you can’t quite put your finger on what it might be.
Is it the colour? Is it the text font that’s being used? Or perhaps it’s the navigation style? Guess what? It’s all of the above! Yes – the old template-deja-vu syndrome. Someone somewhere creates a template look for a website – another person comes along and thinks “I’m having that” and so it goes on until before you know it half the world’s websites look exactly the same!
Stop the madness and create a website that is totally unique!
7. Websites That Shout..
Pop-ups – you either loathe them or hate them. And I’m not just talking about the pop-up adverts – there are some pop-ups that website owners create just to display non-ad related content of their website. E.g.
“Click here to view our contact information”
[click]
Up pops a new window! Why?! Someone please tell me why!!
Unfortunately pop-ups are actually quite effective in certain selling circumstances so they’re probably here to stay. But steer clear if you can and if you absolutely must use them only do so to sell something or get an email address. Having things opening up in new windows (apart from external links) is a really bad idea..
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