I don’t visit Web Designs That Suck often enough-this report reminds me of how hilarious it can be. And how easy it is to make mistakes when you’re designing websites, even though there are thousands of great examples out there. Here are Flanders top mistakes. I’ve tried to summarize some of them, but hardly do them justice! Read the article for yourself (and be sure to watch the videos).
1. Believing people care about you and your site. They don’t: you have to make sure they can find what they want right away, or else they’ll never come back.
2. A man from Mars can’t figure out what your web site is about in less than four seconds. Messaging and usability anyone? He notes, “Non-profit organizations are the worst offenders when it comes to names and taglines (and most everything else).” Don’t make it hard to tell what you do and how you can solve a visitor’s problem.
3. Using design elements that get in the way of your visitors. Can anyone say splash pages, FlashSplash pages, too much text, too little text…?
4. Thinking your web site is your marketing strategy. A great website is essential, but not sufficient.
5. Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn’t look like it. Sometimes sites are so bad, you’d never believe that the designer has ever seen another website.
6. Navigational failure. People expect to be able to get around the site and they expect the navigation to work for them, not for you!
7. Using Mystery Meat Navigation. This is when a site using navigational icons that don’t make sense-when a visitor has to mouse over them or memorize them to figure out how to use the site.
8. Site lacks Heroin Content. Seriously, if your site isn’t great and up to date, why would anyone visit it? If the content doesn’t meet the needs of visitors, who will come back?
9. Forgetting the purpose of text. “Text is text,” Flanders says. “Don’t use graphics for text.” And make it easy to read: contrast is good.
10. Too much material on one page. Enough is enough: people don’t like scrolling (in most cases), so be careful about your page lengths.
11. Confusing web design with a magic trick. People don’t like surprises on the web: it confuses and disorients them.
12. Misusing Flash. Oh, let me count the ways!
13. Misunderstanding the use of graphics
14. Mystical belief in the power of web standards, usability, and tableless CSS. Yes standards are important, but they are simply tools. Most of your visitors won’t care about the tools you use, but how your site renders in their browser and how it helps them solve their problems.
15. Javascript.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?