Web Design Taboos

When I worked in the web design industry developing sites for companies, small businesses, and individuals I was a browsing fiend. I search high and low, far and wide for great web design concepts to stay current and innovative. One thing I found was that many other web site owners could have benefitted from the same activity.

Web design should be kept simple. A simple design is appealing and promotes easy to find content. Poor design turns users off immediately and drives them away. Here are some design elements to avoid:

• Anything that Blinks - Some designers want to draw attention to a certain element so they add a blinking graphic. Blinking text or images may work for the first 2 seconds because they draw the eye to something special but then they start working against the site because they quickly become annoying. Go to MySpace and log in. The ads they have are obnoxious and you can only be there for a short period of time.
• Paper-plate picnic - When attending a picnic or bar-b-que when growing up I was peeved by migrating food. It was upsetting when my jello got all over my roast beef and when potatos got on my dessert. When I wanted to eat something I wanted only that something. I loved compartmentalized plates! Users are the same. When they look at your site they need to see organization so they know what to digest with their eyes. Organize your page elements into intuitive areas and stick to these areas. Some sites have all sorts of topics, graphics, content, etc. on the home page. They are trying to feed their users everything at once and it doesn't taste as good.
• Rainbow pallet - pick some colors and stick with them. Find colors for the background and matching colors for the text. Find a color that really stands out to accent certain things. Don't color every element, title, and content area a different color. Unless your users love rainbow bright they will be turned off. Find a group of Colors and then religiously stick to them
• Alphabit soup - don't go crazy with fonts and font sizes. Choose one or two fonts and corresponding sizes and stick to them. Make your reading as easy as possible so people will stay there.
• Glamour Shots - Most agent sites have an agent photo because the agent is trying to market themself. That's great. Make sure the photo is current and not over the top. We have an agent in our office who has a 25 year old photo on her business cards and she's wearing a feather boa. She generates more laughs with that card than business. You can't tell that she is the same person if you see her in person. Don't let your site draw too many laughs. Make sure your pics are professional.
• Dog whistles - Make sure your site content is relevant to what your user is looking for. I am surprised by how many agents champion their other causes with their real estate agent web site. It's cool to talk about preferences and organizations but it is quite another thing to dedicate the whole site to something other than real estate. Set up another site dedicated to dog whistles and link to it.
• Frames - Frames are easy to use for designers because you set up one navigation area and point all the links to the frame. Don't use frames. Search engines often miss content because they get tangled up in the frames. Users also find them complicated. If a search engine indexes a page that usually pops up in a frame what happens to the navigation? It disappears. Now the user can only see that page. Also, when you click on certain links a browser may confuse which window it should come up in. I've seen links in the same list of items pop up in the same frame, a new window, and overtake the whole window. Users hate getting taken for a ride as they try to navigate your site. The whole page should switch out nearly always with rare exception. (Article: http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/frames.htm)
• Splash pages - A few years ago splash pages were a big deal. Designers would make the home page a graphic page with little to no content. The only navigation would be an "Enter Here" button. These pages are worthless. Search engines hate them because engines only care about content. Users hate them because they have to make an extra action to get to what they want - content. The home page should be content rich and have great navigation.
• Flash - Sites that are all flash may be catchy but search engines don't care about catchy. They want content and they can't read Adobe Flash. Use flash sparingly. It also bugs users who have to wait for it to download.
• Sounds - Don't add beeps, buzzes, boinks, or any other sounds to buttons or mouseovers. The first time a user hears the sound it may be amusing. After that it gets annoying quickly. The only time sound is acceptable is if you choose a classy song or set of songs to play in the background while a user views the site. Make very sure they can turn it off easily or they might get turned off.
• HTML Borders - The standard gray html borders along with many other borders suggest an amatuer site. There are way to many great borders and content wrappers out there.
• Justification - Left justify most body text. Only center titles or short blurbs.

This list will continue as I run into more taboo elements. We will get into some great options for good design. For now, stick to classy design and you'll be set.