Bad Web Design

People surf the web for content. It's really that simple. As a rule, they are not looking for cool graphics or strange plug-ins or anything esoteric - they just want to read, look at or buy something.  

- If your site is a store, they want to purchase a product;  - if it's a fan site for a favorite actress, then they want pictures;  - Most of the time they want to read something interesting.

One important fact to remember about the internet is how incredibly huge it really is. There are hundreds of millions of people logged on at any one time, and there are almost 100 million web sites available to them! Those numbers are staggering.

Because of this, surfers are very fickle. They know that if your site does not immediately or at least quickly give them exactly what they want, they can go somewhere else. This fact applies regardless of whether you are selling a product or displaying pictures of Heather Locklear - people visiting your site want to find something useful or pretty or they will leave immediately.

In order to keep those surfers at your site, you must work hard and you must be smart. Your pages not only have to have good content, they cannot violate some basic rules-of-thumb.

Text

The text must be readable. How can you communicate anything if the communication cannot even be read?

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badtext.htm

Multimedia

Sound, video, java, animations and ActiveX must be well thought-out and it must make sense. There is little that can kill a site faster than poorly implemented multimedia.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badsound.htm http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badvideo.htm http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badjava.htm http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badanimations.htm http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badactivex.htm

Advertisements

You must not bury your site in extraneous advertisements. In fact, as far as advertising is concerned, subtle is better. In general, people do not want to see banners, text links, testimonials or any other kind of advertisements.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badadvertising.htm

Colors

Colors must not hurt the eyes. You should use colors to enhance your message, not detract or degrade it.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badcolor.htm

Load Times

You really want to kill your site fast, then make it load slow over a dialup connection.

Site Layout and Navigation

Your site layout and navigation must be excellent. Poorly designed layouts and navigations make it difficult for your site to communicate because they hide the communication.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badlayout.htm http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badnavigation.htm

Organization

Your site should be well organized. As with layout, if your site is poorly organized then the communication becomes lost.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badorganization.htm

Page Lengths

Keep your page length's short and sweet. This is the web - people want shorter rather than longer pages.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badlongpages.htm

Dynamic HTML

Unless it's essential to your site's intention, it's a good idea to avoid dynamic HTML.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/baddhtml.htm

Cursors

Personally, I would avoid special cursors, specially those using the loathsome Comet Cursors.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badcursors.htm

Graphics

Your graphics must be well planned and useful. Too many graphics will make your pages difficult to understand and increase load times.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badgraphics.htm

Bad use of webrings

Webrings are great, but they need to be carefully integrated into a site or they can be tacky and actually cause you to lose traffic.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badwebrings.htm

Popup Windows

Don't use popup windows at all. There is little that is more hated on the web than these idiotic, loathsome, in-your-face pieces of trash.

http://www.webhelpinghand.com/badpopups.htm

Yes, I know it sounds like a lot to remember, but your job is entertain, enlighten or sell to your visitors. You have to be good and do a good job in order to do this.