Website Development and Web Design - Major Mistakes

On this page we present the main mistakes of web design in order to continue to be guided by precisely these rules and take them as a basis.

1. The site visitor must immediately understand what the site is about

All efforts associated with the production of the site, one way or another, are aimed at attracting an audience to it. If the site is incomprehensible to the user, he will immediately leave it.

2. Do not miss the rules for writing texts for content

Always use the rules for writing texts for the Internet. Highlight important texts, headings, subheadings, try to keep paragraphs no more than 2-3 sentences.

3. Fonts must be standard

After installing custom fonts, consider whether they will be readable by your site's audience. After all, it is quite possible that they are installed only with you.

4. The font should be easy to read and understand by the user.

Font size should be easy to read and visually comprehend. Many users will not bother to change this setting in their browser.

5. Do not choose for the audience of your site

It is very common that links located on the site, when you click on them, open in a separate window. Programmers do this because a link to another site, in their opinion, will cause the user to leave their site. A very wrong decision! And by the way, this can even worsen the search engine promotion of the website. Visitors of the site should decide for themselves whether to open the link in a separate window or while on the site. Believe me, if your site has useful and unique information, the visitor will remember it and come back to you more than once!

6.Do not change user settings

Do not resize the visitor's browser window. It annoys the audience. By doing this, you will scare away the visitor to your site..

7. Do not require registration if it does not justify itself

Recently, most sites require registration in order to access content. How do you think the visitor will react if, after registering on your site, he does not find anything useful for himself in the content? Let the user understand what benefits he can get by arriving on your site.
Don't require visitors to register unless you can give them something valuable and unique.

8. Visitors themselves know where to sign up

Do not try to subscribe site visitors to anything, and do it during the registration process - do not spoil your reputation. Your visitors will decide what they need.

9. Use Flash where you can't get by with static

Don't exaggerate using Flash on the site. It takes longer to load pages, and besides, its excess is sometimes annoying. Besides the fact that Flash increases the loading time of web pages, its excessive use begins to annoy site visitors. Therefore, know the measure and use Flash in web design only where static cannot be dispensed with.

10.Background music on the background of the site - as old as the world

Don't auto-play background music on your site. These are remnants of the birth of the Internet.

11. Let your site visitors choose when and what to listen to

If you need to give your visitors something to listen to, let them choose when they want to hear it. Place “Play/Pause” and “Stop” buttons on your website.

12. Don't exaggerate with banners

There is a very large number of sites with a huge number of banners. Understand that it looks unprofessional, increases download time and traffic, and distracts your audience from the content. Badges and emblems received for participation in some competitions can be placed on a page specially designated for this, for example, "About the company".

13. Use Master Pages

Don't use "entrance" pages. The faster the visitor gets access to the content, the better.

14. Post contact information

Visitors can very often report various problems related to the operation of your site. So don't forget to leave your contact information. This will give you the opportunity to once again control the situation.

15. The back button is one of the main principles of usability

Never deprive visitors' browser's "Back" button of functionality. In order not to make such a mistake, avoid JavaScript and settings that open links in a new browser window

16. Blinking and flickering text - you can't imagine older...

This, in your opinion, "beauty", was used back in 96 ...

17. Refuse URL

Finally start using CNC (human friendly urls). Using CNC in web page addresses, you can use keywords and phrases from the content. This will be positively displayed on access to your site from search engines, and visitors from memory will be able to go to the pages they need.

18. CSS layout is more functional and reliable than tabular layout

Stop using heavy and clumsy tables - save yourself the extra effort, typeset in blocks. CSS is faster and more reliable than tables.

19. Try to ensure that all pages of the site are indexed

Search engines are very popular because with their help, in a split second, everyone can find the information they are interested in. Keep in mind that the more your pages in the database of search engines, the more visitors will come to your site.

20. Avoid using drop-down navigation menus when possible

Drop-down menus limit the visitor's ability to see the full list of site subsections. Sometimes this can scare off your visitor, because. it impairs site navigation. Consider every detail when using them.

21. Use text navigation

What do you think, if you surf sites with disabled graphics and get to a site with scripted or Flash navigation, what would be your reaction? And if this site had text navigation, everything would be different. And besides, text navigation is accessible and reliable.

22. Be explicit if you are linking to an PDF-document

Don't annoy your visitors. Don't have them wait for an unknown PDF document to open. If you link to it - point to it.

23. Don't give visitors a choice

You don't need to make multiple versions of your site. Your site should load and display the same way, regardless of the browser and Internet speed. Lure the visitor with content.

24. By placing ads inside content, you can lose a visitor

Hiding sponsored links under regular ones will only piss off the visitor. Although this will increase the number of clicks on them, do not resort to this, as you will lose the visitor forever.

25. Create an intuitive navigation system

Test the navigation system as you build it. Put yourself in the user's shoes. A simple and effective navigation system is one that allows you to find the content you need in a short time.

26.Don't Delay Visitors with the "Intro"

If a visitor came to your site in order to get content, he is absolutely not interested in listening to any recordings or watching videos. Of course, if he can get information on your site that is not available anywhere else, he will tolerate your “introductions”.

27. Don't layout your site in FrontPage and similar editors

Using visual editors like FrontPage will result in disgusting, invalid, voluminous code littered with incomprehensible tags. When building a website in such a program, you run the risk that it will never be displayed correctly and in the same way in different browsers.

28. Only in the case of the same display in all major browsers, the site can receive visitors

Check the site in all major browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera when making changes, as not all browsers treat the same rules in the same way.

29. Anchors to links should reflect the essence

Of course, it's easier to make a link with a "Click here" anchor than to come up with one that captures the essence. Understand that conscious anchors will give site visitors the ability to understand what they will see when they click on the link. It will also positively affect the link ranking of your site in search engines. What once again confirms the seo-law: what is good for visitors is good for search engines!

30. Do not disable the display of links in the status bar of the browser

When hovering over a link, visitors often pay attention to its anchor and address in the browser's status bar. By not forbidding the display of links, you once again emphasize the concern for the visitor to your site.

31. Don't create obscure links

On some sites, it is very difficult for a visitor to find links, as they are designed to look like text. In such situations, the visitor to your site simply does not understand where he needs to click in order to go where he needs to go. Often this happens by pure chance. Design links in such a way that site visitors understand that these are links, and not something else.

32. Don't make it look like a link

Don't over-emphasize plain text. Visitors to your site may think it's a link when they see underlined text. Don't make them deluded too much, it might disappoint them.

33. Highlight links that the visitor has already visited

Take care of visitor time. Highlight links that the visitor has already visited. This is one of the rules of usability.

34. Don't distract visitors from your content

As you know, banner ads mostly use animated GIFs. Their big disadvantage is that they distract visitors from the content.

35. Add ALT and TITLE attributes to all images on your site

This is important for site visitors with disabled graphics. And besides, it will give you benefits for promotion of your site.

36. Colors should not be annoying

If you use colors that irritate the eyes on your site, the visitor will not be able to stay on it for more than 10 minutes. It is clear that in this case, you will not see popularity.

37. Do not use pop-ups (pop-ups)

Don't ruin your reputation with your audience by using pop-ups and bypassing their blockers set by the user with scripts. The user will obviously not appreciate this and will not understand your actions.

38. Don't create links with JavaScript

Links made in JavaScript are not visible to search engines. In addition, they will only create problems for users, and for some they may not open at all.

39. The footer should be functional

Most visitors at the very bottom of the page tend to see links to the most basic, important sections and pages of the site. Do not deprive them of this pleasure. Create a functional footer for them.

40. Users don't like long web pages

Large articles should be split into several smaller pages, or navigate through them using anchors.

41. Design websites based on your users' monitors

You should remember that the most common monitor resolution at the moment is 1024x768. Build websites with this data in mind. Horizontal scrolling is very bad.

42. Carefully check your site for speech, spelling and grammatical errors

This, of course, is not a web design error, but errors of this kind can easily destroy a visitor's positive opinion about your site.

43. Do not use captcha

Many sites use captcha with absolutely unreadable and poorly recognizable characters. Don't repeat their mistakes. In the event that this is unavoidable, make sure that all characters are displayed clearly.