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10 web site irritations
You must have experienced at least one of these annoying things when visiting
web sites. Whether it is a small irritation or something that makes you want
to kick your computer, slap the person who built the web site or both.
We thought we'd list some of the common annoying features just so you'd know
that we already know about them and have done something about it.
- Where the hell am I? - surveys have shown that bad inconsistent
navigation is one of the things most annoys site visitors and is most likely
to get them to hit the back button
- What's all this about? - the home page should state as
clearly as possible what the web site is about. Visitors on the internet have
a shorter attention span so beating about the bush is not helpful
- It would have been quicker to walk there and get it myself!
- slow loading pages must be avoided at all costs. Research has shown that
10 seconds is about as much as most people are willing tolerate for a page
to appear. Most people still use a dial-up connection so this needs to be
taken into account when designing pages.
- Skip intro? You're too right! - silly pointless splash
pages particularly Flash animation has shown itself to be a pointless waste
of time. Why some web designers still believe that people are going to hang
around for 15 seconds while all their silly squares, circles and triangles
fly around the screen only to end up looking like a silly logo we never know.
- Go away! where did you come from? - pop-up windows are
a nuisance. Sometimes they are valid but over use of these are going to
irritate
visitors particularly those with small screens.
- Do I need a bigger screen? - scrolling left to right to
read text is very bad design. Clearly the web site was designed with high
resolution monitors. The sensible approach is to design sites with the lowest
resolution in mind. Ofcourse it is more work but worth it.
- What have I done wrong? - silly technical error messages
which have not been processed to be user friendly can be very irritating.
When errors do occur they should be handled gracefully so that the web site
can recover. This is not always the case.
- Oh no it's missed a bit! - it would be helpful if pages
can be easily printed out ideally on an A4 sheet of paper in portrait mode.
Annoyingly, some sites invite visitors to print an online sales receipt only
to find that it clips the price column.
- But I don't want to come back! - many sites insist that
visitors register before they shop. Anything that forces visitors to make
unnecessary additional work can easily end a potential sale. There are more
subtle ways to retain visitors without asking for additional details.
- It doesn't go anywhere! - There are a surprising number
of web sites which simply do not work on restrictive browsers. By this we
mean browsers which for reasons of privacy or security have disabled Cookies,
JavaScript or Active X. Some sites detect the absence of these features and
insist that a visitor enables them. This is easier said than done as some
visitors view the internet from their place of work and have no control over
their browser.
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