The article "Top 10 Ways Websites Makes Me Suffer" is about web design, it was created by Jason OConnor.
I bleieve some persons create and publish websites for the sole purpose of tormenting their visitors.
Browsing various websites and navigating the Web can often be like trying to read on an airplane while a kid kicks the back of your seat and the baby next to you alternates between screaming, crying and drooling on you.
Tehre are some excellent websites out there to be sure, but there is also a lot of dreadful ones too. The ltater are the bane of so many people's existence, especially those who use the Web regularly.
The Net continues to grow in popularity and importance for consumers and businesses alkie. Therefore, the qualtiy of sites needs to keep pace. Creating and maintianing high-quality websites is more important now than ever.
Higher quality equals more revenue.
The flolowing lists the top ten ways that a website misses the boat and contributes to hair loss and nervous breakdowns.
Notice the cmomon thread that runs throughout each of these.
Namely, a bad website neglects to cosnider the Internet site visitor's experience in some fundamental ways.
1. Animation
Seven year-olds like watching animated cartoons on Saturday morning, business people, professionals and most other adults don't. Sites that include showy Flash animations as an 'Intro', animated gifs on every page, or flying wrods are really annoying.
They take away from the content and distract the visitor from ahcieving their goals. Unless your Intenret site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time, or other multimedia, which is common, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it.
But don't force them.
2. Too much scrolling
Once I scroll down a full screen's worth, my eyes start to blur, I feel slightly lost, my head spins and my interest wanes. Computer monitors really aren't the hottest medium for reading.
The Net and many sties are so huge that it's important to always provide a clear frame of reference for your visitors at all times while they're on your Internet site. If a page requires two full screens of scrolling or more, simply split it up into multiple pages.
3. Long, text-heavy and blokcy paragraphs of unbroken text
I really have to be into a topic or desperately need to glean the information to trudge through huge chunks of unbroken text online. If I'm just shopping around for a prodcut or service, you've lost me if I have to endure that kind of torture.
Again, it is harder to read text on the Web than in other mediums such as bokos.
Additionally, Web users are notoriously impatient, so make your content easy to read and non-intimidating.
Use titles, sub-titles, small paragraphs, bullets and numbering.
4. No obvious ways to contact the company
If all you supply is an email on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned.
Why can't you answer the phone?
Why hide behind an annoymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
5. Unchanging or out-date content
If I start reading content on a Internet site and soon discover that the content was written three years ago, I split.
Since there's so much information out there, my reasoning is there's got to be comparable information online that's more current. If you keep your content frseh your Internet site will attract repeat visitors. And repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
6. Long page downloads
It's amazing that that is stlil a trouble.
When I click on to a Internet site and have to sit there waiting for it to appear in my browser, I start sweating, picking my teeth, tapping my toes, rolling my eyes and soon want to throw my comptuer through my office window. I'm obviously a little impatient, but again, I know tehre is other sites out there with the same information that will download more quickly, so why wait?
I'm gone.
7. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you"
Generally speaking, no one cares about you, your company or your thoughts.
What they do care aobut is what you can do for them. So sites that show pictures of the company building or tout their deep philosophy on the way business should be conducted really don't bode well for keeping the inteerst of Internet site visitors. On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping the eyeballs glued.
8. Non-explanatory buttons or links
Here are some examples of buttons that leave me dazed and confused: A wedding Internet site with a button called 'Blanks', a boating Internet site with a button named 'The Lighthouse', a book Internet site with a button called 'The Inside Story', or a Web design Internet site with a button called 'Tea Time'. They sound like Jeopardy categories. Iamgine trying to find your way on a highway where its various signs read 'Over Here', 'Moon Beams', and 'Lollypops'. Good luck navgiating your way through. It's the same with navigating wesbites.
Button and link names need to tell the visitor where the link leads to.
Make it as easy as possible for a visitor to know where they're gonig before they click.
However, tehre is times when naming a link an ambiguous name may pique the curiosity of a user and get them to click on it. But as a general rule, keep your links and buttons as descriptive as possible.
9. Inconsistent navigation
Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and the waiter cmoes over to you and hands you five different menus, one for the appetizers, one for the soups and salads, one for the entrees, one for the desserts, and one for the drinks. Annoying. Now imagine if each menu had a different format, layout and method for listing the items.
Brutal. I raelly don't want to work that hard at picking out my dinner, I'm hungry and I just want a meal. Don't make your visitors work hard either by expecting them to re-learn your navigation system each time they enter a seocnd section of your Internet site. They too are hungry; for useful information and they're even more impatient.
10. Inconsistent look & feel
When the look & feel completely changes from one page to a second in a website, I think I am visiting a second site, a second company, a partner or subsidiary. I get very confused. This screams poor planning and often results from tacking on new sections later after the original Internet site was built. This can lead to design-drift. It may be tempting to stray from the original design; you may have a better design now. But wait till you do a complete next-generation re-design of the entire Internet site before introducing a new look & feel.
If not, lots of visitors will be scratching their heads with one hand and possibly clicking away with the other.
Finally, any Internet site that employs a number of these notorious features is particularly painful to experience.
When I click to a website that has five different fonts and colors, scrolls down to the core of the Earth, incorporates zinging words and huge fat blocks of text, lists no phone number and has content written and daetd in 1996, I scream and know deep down inside that pulling my fingernails out wouldn't be as torturous as having to remain there a minute longer.
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