How to design a website that doesn't suck

[Big Frank]

There have been recent discussions about the relative merits of a particular website and a lot of subjective opinions were posted. When we look at websites, especially our own, we have to be objective, we absolutely have to put ourselves in the shoes of the first time visitor to the site. One argument often put forward by website promoters when people like me criticise a website is "well, if you think this is so rubbish, let's see you do better". Whether I can do better is completely irrelevant. The fact that your website sucks to the man in the street is not irrelevant. Because it is to the man in the street that your website has to appeal, not to me. I honestly do try to be objective when critiquing a website. It's my job, I'm used to it, I've studied it since 1996, I've worked on dozens, maybe hundreds of websites and the same errors are made time and time again.

However, sometimes people need to be reminded that the basics of good web design have remained fairly constant since Vincent Flanders started webpagesthatsuck.com back in '96. Since this is the Talk Web part of Talkgraphics, I though it about time I listed his 30 List of the Top 30 Web Design Mistakes to help those of us Xartists ensure we create some of the most effective as well as beautiful websites on the Internet. There's not a single reason why a beginner to Xara Web Designer or Xara Designer Pro should have a sucky website, and here's why:

1. Our site tries to tell you how wonderful we are as a company, but not how we're going to solve your problems.
2. We've designed our site to meet our organization's needs (more sales/contributions) rather than meeting the needs of our visitors.
3. We say "Welcome to..." on our home page.
4. It takes longer than four seconds for the "Man from Mars" to understand what our site is about.
5. The "Man from Mars" cannot quickly find the focal point of the home page.
6. Our site doesn't make us look like credible professionals.
7. Our home page — or any page — takes more than four seconds to load.
8. We never conduct user testing.
9. We don't analyze our log files.
10. We don't know which design items are not necessary.
11. Quickly scanning the page doesn't tell our visitors much about its purpose.
12. We have not eliminated unnecessary design items.
13. The "Man from Mars" cannot quickly find the focal point of the current page.
14. We don't know if our site looks the same in the major browsers.
15. Our pages have too much/too little white space.
16. Our site mixes text colours on the page.
17. We don 't put design elements where our visitors expect them.
18. Logo is not on the top of every page and clicking it doesn't lead to the home page.
19. Visited links don't change colour.
20. Our site doesn't make visitors feel they can trust us.
21. We don't identify PDF files with an icon.
22. Our site uses divider bars.
23. Our logo does not look like it was professionally made.
24. No one has spent the time figuring out if our colour scheme alienates our international users.
25. Our site breaks when visited with the Javascript turned off.
26. Our site doesn't have a privacy or legal statement page.
27. Our site mixes and matches text sizes on the page.
28. We don't know what content is popular.
29. Our site's design was "borrowed" from another site.
30. The important content does not fit in the first screen / We use justified text.

This is the important stuff based on real research using real people's reactions to real websites. There's much more where this came from if you go to this page on his website. I'm still learning, I'm always learning.

I hope this information helps those of us who want to create attractive, functional websites based on a solid foundation. And in the process we make people aware of Xara's web design products!

[gwpriester]

Simple is always better.

Make it easy for your visitor to find relevant content.

And life is not a contest to see how many extraneous and irrelevant animated geegaws you can add to your website.

[pauland]

Great thread!

I suspect it will go straight over the heads of those who need to take notice.

I often look at website feedback on talkgraphics and I sometimes think the feedback is for a differrent site altogether. It really doesn't matter so much for personal sites, but it's sometimes a car crash for a business.

Thanks for the thread.

[ruffino]

Simple is always better.

Make it easy for your visitor to find relevant content.

And life is not a contest to see how many extraneous and irrelevant animated geegaws you can add to your website.

TOTALLY AGREE! I actually have a template just for fun to get it out of my system.

[MediaGuy]

Very true, and hard to believe that most of those gems are over 14 years old now. Ah, memories of the dot com bust and when you could get a whopping headache from the pixelated gif animations jumping and flashing from every corner of your 800 by 600 screen and not to mention those Penny banners and link back to you if you'll link back to me... oh my.

Cheers

[planetsquid]

Thanks for posting. I confess that there was a day when I started every website with "Welcome to..."

Here's my contribution...

* Never ever have an 'Under construction' page on your site.
* Please don't make your entry page a flash introduction that I have to skip past to get to the site content.
* Never have a tiled and animated GIF as your page background.
* Don't use a guest book on your site. It's so last century!
* Visible page counters. Just don't go there.

Rich

[zaphodeist]

Posted these links before but you might still find them of use. Jakob Nielsen's Top10 Mistakes and an interesting piece about how pages are viewed from the same site.