Nine Web Design No-Nos

One of my seminars at the Church Media conference last week dealt with web design. Frankly, I didn't learn a whole lot; after all, this is something I do professionally. But I did get a kick out of the leader's "Six Things Never To Use in Web Design." I agreed with all six, and added three of my own. So that's nine items. I've been trying, hard, to come up with a tenth thing, but though I've had some good candidates, nothing has surfaced as a rock solid "definitely don't do this."

So, I'll run with the nine. Most of these were popular in the 1990s, and should have died in the 1990s, the early days of the web. And most of these are very common on local church websites, a fact of life which pains me greatly.

1. Frames. Don't design web pages with frames. It is so 1990s. Some browsers have trouble with frames. And if you care about Google rankings, definitely avoid frames. (I've never designed with frames.)

2. Scrolling banner text. This comes under the heading "Don't do it just because you can." Designers see that their program enables them to scroll text, so they do it. It's just annoying. Like the similar FX in Powerpoint, where letters come flying across one at a time to form words. Don't do it just because you can.

3. Animated GIFS. I hate sites that are plastered with cutesy animations that the designer stole from somewhere else.

4. Hit counters. Don't put these on your website. They look amateurish (from a design standpoint), and "hits" are not like the more accurate "visits" (by accessing my blog homepage, I got probably a dozen "hits" as you accessed pieces of artwork, plus my javascript and CSS pages).

5. Patterned backgrounds. You can download gobs of square patterns to use as backgrounds for your pages. In general, avoid them. They look cheap.

6. Template buttons and art. You can buy a CD with thousands of graphic buttons; you just add your words to it. Plus lines, shapes, stars, symbols, and all kinds of other things. All of which look cheap. They also take extra time to load, as opposed to using textual links and buttons, which is the current standard (in tandem with Cascading Style Sheets).

7. Midi music. If I come across a site with music playing on it—that's the quickest way to get me to close the page. Especially if I'm at work. Music is especially annoying on ebay.

8. Splash screens. This is a page you're forced to endure before getting to the actual page you want. You certainly don't want to see it every time you visit that site. Instead of directly entering the store, it's like being forced to come through another entrance with a special waiting room. Splash screens kill you on Google rankings, and studies show that up to a third of people never go beyond the splash screen. I click out of them as fast as possible.

9. Under Construction pages. I constantly have pages under construction—but I don't advertise that fact. I only link to a page or a section when it's done. Nobody wants to be taken to an "under construction" page. It just wastes your time. When you have something there, then give me a link. I'm not interested in your master plan or good intentions.

Any candidates for a 10th item?

Posted on June 27, 2006 02:57 PM|

Comments

Pop-ups.

Posted by: Tom | June 28, 2006 07:37 AM

Of COURSE! Why didn't I think of that one?

Posted by: Steve Dennie | June 28, 2006 11:02 AM

Post a comment

All comments are moderated, which means your comment won't appear until it's been approved. Thanks for your patience.

Name:
Email:
URL:
Comments:
(you may use HTML tags for style)