There are plenty of mistakes in the world of web design. Let's
look at what I believe to be the 10 biggest.
1. Too Many Ads. When you're trying to make money from your
website, it's all too easy to overwhelm your site with ads. Put
yourself in your user's place and take a good hard look at your
site and ask yourself if the ads feel intrusive. Does the site
look like an information source or does it feel more like a
page-holder for the ads?
2. Plugin Overload. You have to keep plugin useage to a maximum
of 1 type per page. If you've got Flash, then you can't have a
media player, or if you're using Java, then no Flash. It's not
as bad to use the same plugin twice, however.
3. Flash Intros. Please, don't use a Flash intro on your
website. They have been so overused that they're becoming
universally mocked.
4. Unclear Layout and Navigation. Many websites, especially
business sites, suffer from some kind of disease where the very
simplest task takes 10 steps. If users are asking you how to do
things on your site, then you need to improve your layout and
navigation. If there are certain tasks people want to do
frequently, put them on the front page.
5. No Marking for External Links. There are 2 kinds of links:
internal (to other parts of your website) and external (to other
websites). For the benefit of your users, it's best if you mark
external links, either by making them a different color or using
some kind of a symbol (a box with an arrow is the usual one).
It's also good to make the external links open in new windows,
so people aren't leaving your site altogether when they click
them.
6. Unclear Linking. Some web pages are designed to show links
only when people put their mouse over them. While this might
make the design look nicer, it is not very user friendly.
Instead, use a clearly contrasting color for links, and
preferably underline them. This makes them more visible to the
user, thus more user friendly.
7. Unlabelled Email Links. Always clearly mark a link that will
send email (a mailto link) with the word 'email'. If you turn
clicking a name into send email, you'll annoy users who expected
to find out more about the person.
8. Broken Links. You should check your links regularly to make
sure that they all still work. There's nothing worse than
finding a site that looks useful, only to find that it hasn't
been updated in years, so most of the links don't work. While a
website does mostly run itself after a while, that doesn't mean
that you should neglect essential maintenance.
9. Strange Fonts. Stick to the most common web fonts: that's
pretty much just Arial, Georgia, Tahoma and Verdana. If you use
more obscure fonts, then most users won't have them -- and those
that do will find your text hard to read. The only place for
non-standard fonts is in your logo or headings, and then only if
they are displayed as an image.
10. Badly-sized Text. It's important to keep your text around
the standard size. Making text too big or too small makes it
hard to read and annoying for many users. The best thing you can
do is use relative text sizing (not pixels) that allows the
browser to respect the user's preferred text size. You should
also consider offering buttons on your site to decrease or
increase the font size.
About the author:
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Design DIY to learn more. Ron King is a full-time
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Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the
resource box is left intact and the links live.
