Bad Web Site Design

Why are there are so many bad web design techniques in use today? With a wealth of good web design information available, don't you think that these web sites would change their ways already?

#1 - Pop Ups and Broken Back Buttons

You hate the site and just can't hit the back button fast enough, but the web site has broken your browsers back button, locking you down to throw popup ads at you faster than you can close them.

Do these %&*@#? (Web Edit) sites, truly believe that, if they bombard you with popup ads fast enough, that you will actually buy something from them?

I wouldn't buy water from them if I was on fire.

#2. Huge Flash Intro Screen

How about making a visitor with a slow dial up connection wait 5 minutes to get to your site, so they can watch some Flash effects first. Visitors don't want to wait to see a cartoon load or a fireworks display just to see your products on your site. Most will hit the back button.

#3. Horizontal Scrolling

Web sites can really drive people crazy making them scroll left and right to read each line. I don't think anyone likes horizontal scrolling. So why do so many sites have horizontal scrolling?

To all you sites with horizontal scrolling, either make your site width 600 or 100% to fix the problem already.

#4. Slow Load Time Problems

Slow load time is maybe the single biggest problem for an ecommerce site. When customers try to navigate around the site, looking for items they want to buy, the site drags at a snail's pace. Most visitors leave and find a faster site to purchase from.

Usually this is caused by cheap web hosting, too many graphics, unoptimized graphics, or poor coding.

#5. Overuse of Banner Ads

I have visited ecommerce sites that must have been in 20 banner ad exchanges programs. Frankly the site looked like the classified section of the back of a cheap magazine. Banner ads for casinos and lingerie don't belong on a golf equipment site. It looked like this site was actually selling golf products, but the average user would be very confused. (I still am confused.)

#6. Poor Spelling

Most modern day computers come with built in spell checkers. Why do some people just go out of their way not to use one? You are broadcasting your intelligence level to the world when you display your poor spelling on the Internet. (Buy sum cool thingz on mi sight!)

#7. Lots of Moving Things

Banners flashing, graphics twirling, words scrolling, with a string of fireworks chasing your mouse pointer.
Now try and read the white text on the black background with all of this going on.
It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
Please limit your site to only one moving or flashing object per page.

#8. Plenty of Music

Make sure your site cranks up some loud meaningless music, so you get everyone browsing the Internet at work in trouble. That is a real fast way to make someone hit the back button. The problem is that lots of people surf the web at work, and could be potential customers, so don't scare them off.

#9. No Contact Information

You have searched the site high and low. You want to buy the product they are offering on the site, but you can't find how to buy it, or how to contact anyone for information. What is the site for then? No way to buy and no way to contact anyone. Did they forget an important part?

Please include contact information, or a contact link, on every page so your visitors can contact you if they want to buy something or make an inquiry. Maybe your visitor wanted to give you $10,000 for your domain name, but unfortunately now you will never know.

#10. Garbage Sites

Make sure you include 10,000 words of products you don't even carry so that I find you on the search engines and then waste my time looking all over your site for it. Trust me, I am not going to buy what you're selling if you trick me on to your site with items you don't even carry. I found a site on a major search engine that had around a thousand pages of garbage that all took you to his Ebay link.

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