Why your site sucks
April 4th, 2008
I was thinking today about certain things that make me cringe when I go to sites, and decided to put this rough draft of a list together. You can use it as a checklist of what not to do, or if you care to add to it, feel free within the comments section.
Design
- Splash Page
- If your site has a page before your home page that does nothing but have a logo, or “enter” button, drop it now. This is no longer 1999.
- Favicon
- You know that slick little icon you see on this site up in the address bar? Well that is called a favicon, and you should create on for your site right now. It is an easy way for users to identify your site from others within their bookmarks, or favorites. It is also free real estate to promote your service even further, so why not take advantage of it?
- Confusing Layout
- If your layout appears confusing at all, like for instance if you have 3-columns each of the same width, all the same text, color, etc. the user will not have a clue where to look. It is important to set yourself up with a nice clean visual hierarchy from the get-go to make life easier for the user.
- Overused Layout or Theme
- “Hey, I’ve seen this exact design before” should never be the first words out from potential clients, unless of course thy just forgot about your site, and are just now remembering it. If you are a casual blogger, a default theme is fine, but not if you are trying to sell something!
- You just have too many damn:
- Fonts
- Scripts
- Images
- Colors
- Animations
- I have no idea what that says…
- So your text contrast is off, fix it, pale yellow on white does not work. Red on Gray is giving me a stroke. Clean it up!
- “It’s too small” another thing no one likes to hear…especially when it comes to the size…of…..your……TEXT
- Line-Height, give them lines some breath’n room son.
Development
- Invalid Markup
- Clean up your code. Do yourself a favor and validate ALL of your pages, and make sure you are using a doctype
- Improper use, or lack there of heading tags
- You know, H1, H2, H3…Right. Use them.
- “Div & Classitis”
- Nested divs, that go beyond a wrapper or two, are a bad idea, and clutter your code. Also, contrary to popular belief, classes will not always solve all your problems. Don’t make unnecessary amounts of classes to correct style problems another selector could fix without the bloated markup addition.
UI
- Tons of forms
- Don’t try and rival the CIA’s database by asking for my mother’s maiden name to read your newsletter.
- Inconsistent Navigation
- If on your home page your main nav is on the top, guess what? We expect it to be there throughout the rest of the site.
- Too many items
- You have too many damn items in your main nav if you have more than 6. Limit them, so we can focus on the more important items, and then drill down from there.
- Too many menus in general
- Having nested lists for a sidebar navigation is fine, but what I am referring to is when you have a main nav at the top, then a sub nav on the left, and another mixed nav to the right with more sub levels. If you need multiple menus, please offer the user a breadcrumb trail.
- No call to action
- Great site, but what do you want me to do now…Give your users a jump start to success! If your purpose is to get more blog readers, why not point them in that direction, either verbatim, or with a nifty link.
Accessibility
- Full Flash Pages
- Awesome. I do not have Flash 9.2.3.1.4.qm-4 so all I get to see is a black page! Not so well thought out. Oh, and Flash sucks, so use that as a guideline (that was not entirely true, but use your best judgement).
- Poorly used images
- If you are using images anywhere in your site, make sure you have an alt attribute explaining the image. Also, if you are using images to replace headings, or other text, make sure you have the markup to begin with before you use a replacement method of choice.
- Popups, popdowns, popovers
- Nothing with the word “pop” in the traditional sense of the word (think back again to 1999). This might be a good time to use JavaScript to it’s full potential by traversing the DOM to show or hide stuff. Another option could be AJAX, then you earn bragging rights as well.
- Links open in new window
- No thank you. You better have a damn good reason for this. How dare you tell me I need a new browser to view a link?
- Poor use of title tag
- Take a look down at your “toolbar” for Windows users, and you should see the title text for whatever tab, or page you have opened. The title tag is your friend.
- It just plain old doesn’t work
- Turn JS off and if your site doesn’t work 100%, go back to the drawing board, because you are losing a client, fan, or commenter with each passing moment.
- Is that a link?
- If I have to guess what a link is, you have failed as a designer. Style your links as traditionally as possible, ie; blue-ish (not always necessary), and underlined.
- No selected states for menus
- Do yourself and your users the favor of giving at least your main navigation “current” or “selected” states as another form of place identification.
- Where is the search button?
- Whoever said it isn’t cool anymore to have search buttons. Not all users know enough to hit ‘enter’ when through with their query input. Oh, and another thing, don’t give the user instructions on how to use the form. If it isn’t clear from looking at it, you have failed.
So this is by no means a completed list, so please feel free to add to it!
Oh, and if you liked it, why not head over and Digg it?
- Posted at 2:39 pm in resources
- Leave a comment
i think open in new window is quite effective, I use it for any link that leaves the current site. Otherwise people will go the new link have a looksie and then want to get back to your site, have to click back heaps of times. That as well as PDF’s as they are slow and annoying to load and its easier just to be able to close the tab/window then press back and wait for it to load.
Sorry, Couldn’t resist. And I’m not sure if you ended up changing the text or not, but it’s fine to me.