Bad Web Site Design

Why are there so many bad web design techniques in use today? Anyone that spends time online sees them everyday, and they make us all crazy. With a wealth of good web design information available, you would think that these web sites would change their ways. Below is our TOP TEN list of the worst web design techniques.

#1 - Pop Ups and Broken Back Buttons

You hate the site and just can't hit the back button fast enough, but the web site has broken your browsers back button, locking you down to throw pop-up ads at you faster than you can close them.

Do these %$*@#? web sites truly believe that if they bombard you with pop-up ads fast enough, you will actually buy something from them? I wouldn't buy water from them if I were on fire.

#2. Huge Flash Intro Screen

How about making a visitor with a slow dial-up connection wait 5 minutes to load your site, so they can watch some Flash effects first. Visitors don't want to wait to see a cartoon, or a fireworks display, just to see your products on your site. Most will hit the back button if they have a dial-up connection.

#3. Horizontal Scrolling

Web sites can really drive people crazy by making them scroll left and right to read each line. I don't think anyone likes horizontal scrolling. So why do so many sites have horizontal scrolling? It is a result of poor design, period. To all you sites with horizontal scrolling, either make your site width 800 or 100% to fix the problem already.

#4. Slow Load Time Problems

Slow load time is usually the single biggest problem for an e-commerce site. When customers try to navigate around the site, looking for items they want to buy, the site drags at a snail's pace. Most visitors leave and find a faster site to purchase from. Most often this is caused by: cheap web hosting, too many graphics, un-optimized graphics, or poor coding.

#5. Overuse of Banner Ads

I have visited e-commerce sites that must have been in 20 banner ad exchange programs. Frankly, the site looked like the classified section of the back of a cheap magazine. Banner ads for casinos and lingerie don't belong on a golf equipment site. It looked like this site was actually selling golf products, but the average user would be very confused.

#6. Poor Spelling

Computers come with built-in spell checkers. Why do some people just go out of their way not to use one? You are broadcasting your intelligence level to the world when you display your poor spelling on the Internet. (Buy sum cool thingz on mi sight!)

#7. Lots of Moving Things

Banners flashing, graphics twirling, words scrolling, with a string of fireworks chasing your mouse pointer.
Now, try and read the white text on the black background with all of that going on.
It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
Please limit your site to only one moving or flashing object per page.

#8. Plenty of Music

Make sure your site cranks up some really loud, meaningless music, so you get everyone browsing the Internet at work in trouble. That is a super-fast way to make someone hit the back button. A lot of people surf the web at work, and could be potential customers, so don't scare them off with pointless music!

#9. No Contact Information

You have searched the site high and low and are ready to buy. But now, you can't find how to buy it, or how to contact anyone for more information. What is the site for then? No way to buy and no way to contact anyone. Did they forget an important part?

Please include contact information, or a contact link, on every page of your site, so your visitors can contact you if they want to buy something or make an inquiry. Maybe your visitor wanted to give you $10,000 for your domain name, but now, unfortunately, you will never know.

#10. Garbage Sites

Yes, make sure you include 10,000 words related to products you don't even carry, just so that I find you on the search engines, and then waste my time looking all over your site for it. Trust me, I am not going to buy what you're selling if you trick me into using your site by using keywords for items you don't even carry. I found a site on a major search engine that had about a thousand pages of garbage, which all took you to his Ebay link.