Have you ever considered that your website may be annoying? When its comes to website design, knowing what visitors hate most is a must, unless you dont want them to visit you again. This article describes what you should exclude from your website. If you know about an annoying website, feel free to send this article to its webmaster. A few weeks ago I received an email from a colleague asking me to check one of the website he had developed. He is a web designer and his client wanted a nice attractive flash header. The flash header was great. You cant miss it at all. Some nice graphics elements were flying in while sound effects created just the right atmosphere. However, after starting to explore the website, the header became very annoying because every time you clicked on the website the header restarted. What was pleasant initially became very annoying very quickly, disturbing your concentration and making it difficult to read what was on the page. He is not the first to create what I like to call "annoying website design". Many webmasters, especially new webmasters are totally "in love" with their ideas and tend to go overboard with their design in one way or another. Its nice to have an attractive header, but is it really necessary to assault the visitors mind with it? In my opinion, absolutely not! Webmasters sometimes forget that their website design should send a message to the visitor that should reflect the website topic and not the programmers skill level. Is Your Website Design Annoying? Well. Its not that hard to be annoying. However, some webmasters are much better than others at annoying their visitors. Check my top 5 list and decide for yourself whether you have been annoying your visitors. - Background music Unless you are operating an online internet radio station or sell music CDs, why play a midi/wav file in the background continuously on every page?
- Huge font size If you are designing a website for people with a disability then you are doing the right thing, but if not then you are shouting. People dont like it when someone shouts at them.
- Small font size Do you want to be heard? Keep a normal tone, dont shout but "speak" in a reasonable volume.
- Overlapping layers Layers can be very useful up to the point. But not when they are being used to put an annoying message in the visitors face. Dont try to force your visitor to read your messages. Try persuasion instead of brute force.
- Popup windows Even though popup windows are now blocked by many add on tools, webmasters keep using them. The annoying part of popups is sometimes we actually miss important information because of those anti popup tools. Haven't you heard the old phrase "if you cant beat him, join him? Dont use pop up windows. Put your important messages in a central place on your website.
Most likely each one of us has our own private top five lists. You probably have many more annoying design cases in mind. Well, youre right, the list is much longer then that. I just wanted to describe some of the highlights in order to bring this important subject your attention.Some of you are probably reading those lines and smiling while some others have a feeling a deja-vu. Keep in your mind that as a webmaster the last thing you want to do is put lots of effort into your website and then find out that your visitors hate it. It's not a matter of taste, it's more about being the same polite person we all try to be when we go to a party. I tried to point out a few things that might be useful to some web designers and webmasters. I dont know about you, but Im going to send this article to my friend, hopefully hell send it to his client :) |
