Major Website Mistakes Improve your site

[hazeshow 0]

One of the biggest mistakes are FLASH INTROS I think. The site visitors will hate it to click the "Skip Intro"-Button every time they visit your site. So even worse is a Flash Intro without the Skip Intro-Button! For me personally Flash itself is a mistake. There are internet users without Flash Plug-in, and others like me who simply turn Flash off because they don't like it. And blind people can't "see" what's going on in a flash movie.GrettingZ

[moonwitch1405241479 0]

Here more information on same topic:

 

Keep enjoying

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Next time, please type a bit more than 2 short sentences when you copy entire articles. I have reduced credits for this one, solely because YOU didn't contribute, you just copied from other sites. You didn't even comment on what you quoted.

 

Now onto the actual topic

 

First, color choices. I can not stress this enough, I have seen websites with bright red text on bright blue background. It instantly gave me a killer migraine. So choose your color scheme wisely. Personally I use http://www.colorschemer.com/ - yep people I paid for a color schemer program, it helped me tremendously and saved me a lot of time of testing colors.

 

Secondly, I can't begin to count the times where I found people completely amazed by the fact that if you use a font called "I_like_fonts" on your site for let's say the entire site, that people without that font installed can't see the site as you intended. Actually skip using special fonts all together, use font families declared in CSS and stick with the standard ones. That way you can be sure that all systems will see the font as intended (Win, linux and mac)

 

Also, I have seen several sites that use a solid color image as background, just using the hex code as background color will save a lot of bandwidth. Personally, I do use background images, but I keep them very small and tileable, they only have to downloaded once and that's it, so it's still fast. (am talking about 5kb max as size here)

 

I think that's enough rant for now

[iGuest 3]

Useful Tips. Especially that e-mail one. Thnx bro....hmm Nice site

[scryoko 0]

First of all, I'm glad that this post exists. It is *very* helpful and useful information that point out things that people may or may not notice. I, myself, found the advice useful and plan to use them myself -- if I haven't already.

 

5) Look The Same

 

Make sure your site looks the same on Netscape as it does on Internet Explorer. Many other browers are very similar to these two. Mozilla is an exsample, it is like Netscape. Test yours on both before going public.

This is a really good advice -- as the website designer would *want* their site to look the same on all browsers; however... it's not entirely possible. Each browser company (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, etc.) render their browsers differently -- for many reasons, one being competition.

 

Each of the companies want people to use *their* browser so they try to make theirs different (however little) from other browsers, so that they have the edge, so that they can have the upper hand over another browser company. Because of this, a webpage will look different on every browser -- even if it's only a little bit of change here or there.

 

I am not, however, trying to discourage you from taking this advice (though it sounds like it, I know. -.-;. I just want you guys to know this fact so that you might not get frustrated when the webpage opened in IE isn't the same as when it is opened in Firefox. Haha... been there, done that, and I was annoyed as hell. But, even as I know that now, I still try my best to make the webpage appear as how I want it to in different browsers.

 

Hm... if you actually want, and I think this is a better way as well... what you can do is still try to make your site look similar on different browsers, but should also label a "Website best viewed with [insert browser name here]" message on the homepage (or the initial, "Enter" page) of your site. This way, the user can either choose to continue viewing the site in the browser they are still currently using or, if they aren't already using it, change to the browser of the recommended one.

 

Another tip I have that in improving your website is to not have a horizontal scrolling bar -- especially when you don't have a vertical one. I would say the majority of sites (and whoo! that's a *lot* of sites) use vertical scroll bars and many, many people are accustomed to those. If you would like to use a horizontal scroll bar, this is okay (but not entirely recommended) as long as the user does not have to scroll much using that scroll bar. And even then, it rather throws the flow of your site out the window, because even if the site has both a vertical and horizontal scroll bar, no matter which scroll bar is the main one (the one you'd use to scroll the most in order to view the detailed contents on the site), it can be annoying to have to work with both scrolls in order to be able to view everything (or even just one thing) on a site.

 

Another reason is not to use a horizontal scroll bar is readability. Once again, people are more accustomed to reading/browsing through a side that operations up and down in order to view contents, as opposed to left and right.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-- scryoko

[YudzzY 0]

This is really very good helpful tutorial for me and for my site. The tutorial here are not very hard to grasp, i only need some care towards these mistakes. I have also make some of these mistakes, and i think i'm gonna take more care about it in futur..in other words, i will have to re-design the site.. lol

[Logan Deathbringer 0]

ok here is a big tip to experianced and inexperianced webdesigners.Get a basic website built using the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) then make a new directory on your account. In this new directory copy your entire site.You might be asking, "why should I do this?" Here is the answer, by doing this you can modify it and screw it up without haveing to worry about downtime. This will not only allow you to make changes at will but at the same time if you make a mistake that shuts down the entire test site...well the main site is still up for your users to use and you don't have down time. It will also let you play with new ideas and what not and see how they actually work without having to subject your visitors to a purple background with pink text and thus get blinded and have a feeling of nausa..lol...sorry bad joke...Well there is my rant...

[Grafitti 0]

I must be one of the only people who doesn't like flash. Not everyone has it installed on their computer, and if you only have a dial-up, you're not going to want to wait around. But the main main reason why i don't like it , and don't use it on my sites, is because you can't right-click and save. that is one of the most frustrating things i encounter when browsing, and i wouldn't make others go through that as well. of course there are ways around the right click protection, but if you don't mind people saving your artwork or whatever, then it's a pretty useless thing.

[iGuest 3]

Well Done Tutorial! And followed up with a bunch of great suggestions.I'm just visiting fromthe Xisto dot com Forums and I'll be posting a link to this page immediately. There are loads of members over at the Trap that will benefit from this information.Thanks for letting me visit, I will be back...

[agentblade 0]

Thanks for the great tips.. I'll be using it to "test" my website so it'll be as user friendly as possible..The key is to really Keep It Simple.. Nothing worst then a website with links everwhere, colors and graphics splashed everywhere so much so you have no idea where to go from there...I like flash websites because it's a move from the traditional html websites. It's full of color and animation and interactivity. Having said that however, I've seen for myself poorly done flash websites with useless intros and slow load times due to the huge amount of animations. Just like any other html website, flash websites must also be kept simple. The best animations in a website are subtle ones, i feel. Maybe others might want to add tips on how to build a good and effective flash based website as I'm currrently into flash websites.. hehe..

[PocketChange 0]

One of my dislikes in web design is using grey text. I don't mind slightly grey text on a white background - something that is similar to black and still readable, but mainly grey letters that are hard to read. Combine this with a small font and that's a recipe for not so friendly site. Surprisingly, there are number of webpages out there that use this approach. It reminds me of a fine print some financial companies use to have us skip reading the important stuff.

[warallthetm 0]

I hate when a page take forever to load, and i find out it was bacuase they had a java applet text ticker. FireFox take a while to load java. Try to avoid applets and use the marque tool. Also, DONT PUT BACKROUND MUSIC! It is the worst thing ever! Especialy if it starts from the beginnig every time you load a new page.

[pyost 0]

Yes, you really should avoid JavaScript, unless it really is necessary. There is always a slight possibility that the target browser disabled JavaScript. If you want multi-level menus, stick to pure CSS and HTML.As for the marque, it's not as useful as it is (was) cool-looking. Who wants to chase text in order to read it?? I did use it when starting web design, but soon I figured out how useless and stupid it is.

[Arbitrary 0]

One of my dislikes in web design is using grey text. I don't mind slightly grey text on a white background - something that is similar to black and still readable, but mainly grey letters that are hard to read. Combine this with a small font and that's a recipe for not so friendly site. Surprisingly, there are number of webpages out there that use this approach. It reminds me of a fine print some financial companies use to have us skip reading the important stuff.

True. Small text can be a major hassle for people with poor eyesight (especially the old). Websites should keep their fonts around 14px so that at least most people can see it. No one enjoys squinting. I don't particularly like white text on a black background either--it just makes for harder reading. The KISS theory has been applied to lots of places, and definitely applies here. The simpler the easier to navigate, and the easier to navigate the more visitors you will have, voila!.
Applets can be quite a hassle too, especially if they come without a warning. For instance, if I knew the next loading page was going to be an applet because I knew I was accessing some game, that's fine. But if I didn't know and you decide to use applets for menus or something (I saw a site like this once. Pissed me off), I'm going to be really annoyed. Applets nearly freeze my computer every time they load.

Background music is equally bad. 1) They take forever to load. 2) Not everyone may have the same music tastes as the webmaster and 3) Not everyone is in a situation where suddenly having music blast out from their computer is going to be very discreet. (What if someone next door is trying to soothe their crying baby?)

As for animation...I've seen it done good and right on websites. (Though currently I've only seen one site that mastered this.) So if you're going to put animations, do it right. Put it in a nondistracting place; make the users amused instead of annoyed. If you can't do this, just skip animations--it won't cost you any to get rid of a possible annoyance.

When I first started making a site, I thought marquees were very cool. I used them for nearly every banner, header, or piece of text. After a while, I visited a site with a marquee for a huge chunk of text that I was very interested in reading. As I attempted to read the text, I finally realized how annoying moving text was, the price of patience it could cost the reader. So after that it was "Bye bye" marquees.
Edited July 10, 2006 by Arbitrary (see edit history)

[Josh-MOD 0]

thank you for these great tips. i will keep them in mind when i redesign my website

[doudou 0]

I would like to add one major mistake when designing a website, although I am not an expert at this subject, I’ve seen this happen too often on a lot of nice websites.

 

Do not in the pursuit of designing a sophisticated and advanced website and loose readability. Being able to read the webpage is the most basic and important component in website design. I’ve come across many websites that seem to forget this. Their text is just either impossible or hard to read. No matter how beautiful your website is or how interesting your content is, if it is unreadable readers normally loose interest fairly fast and leave.