What to Avoid When Designing Web Sites

I enjoy using Entrecard on a daily basis. It allows me to find new blogs that I would have never have visited without going through Entrecard. At the same time I also find blogs that I would never visit again, not because of the content, but because of how they are designed.

In this post I will list several points that I consider to be a bad for Web sites and blogs, and items that should be avoided if you want to keep your visitors coming back for more.

What You Should Avoid When Managing a Web Site

I have written many posts regarding designing a good Web site, at least in my opinion. 

Now let’s look at some bad points that you should avoid when designing Web sites.

1. Creating a complex design.
   Avoid adding too many links, objects, and ads to the sidebars and focus more on providing an easy to find and read navigational links. Your visitors won’t stay around hunting for a specific link. Keep the navigation simple.
2. Popup Ads.
   These windows that open when you visit a site are really annoying, and in reality serve no real purpose as most users would just close them anyway. Making money with ads is okay by me, just as long as they are incorporated in the Web pages and don’t display in a new window.
3. Background Music.
   I have visited many Web sites that include some music that loads and then plays in the background. If you would like music on your site, provide the play option to the user and don’t play it automatically.
4. Flash animation – no real content.
   I usually visit sites looking for specific information. When a site’s navigation and content are all contained in flash animation, I usually close the window. Although flash can look great, I prefer the standard text to Flash on a Web site. Besides, search engines can’t index content properly if it is built in Flash animation.
5. Copied content – no original ideas.
   Don’t copy the hard work of others and post it on your site. You will probably be punished by the search engines for having duplicate content, and won’t get many visitors in the end. You could write a brief summary of the Web page and then link back to the original site.
6. Many Large Images.
   Many times I have visited a personal Web site and had to wait for several minutes for some images to download. If you would like to use photos on your site, make them smaller in an image editor first, and then upload them. Don’t let the browser do the resizing since they will still be large, and just look smaller.

Summary

This post has provided several items that you should avoid on your Web site if you want your visitors to keep returning for more. The items listed above are the most common annoyances on Web sites today, and they are the reasons I refuse to re-visit a Web site.

Now the question to you is: what would you add to the list to make it more complete?