The Profit Maximising Web Geek

Many web designers and other creative web types spend so much time talking about what you SHOULD do to generate traffic and grow confidence among your visitors. But sometimes it is also a good idea to know what not to do.

After all, while you might be actively trying to drive traffic to your website, you might also be unconsciously keeping visitors away.

Here are a top 10 list of the most annoying website features that I have come across recently in my travels around the World Wide Web.

10. Teeny Tiny Font.

There’s nothing that makes a business’ web site look more amateur than the poor use of font.

If a visitor has to squint to read a paragraph, then this is a major problem. Similarly, if the font size is unreasonably large, it will be equally hard for a visitor to read your content.

9. Excessive Animation.

Perhaps you found some animated ‘bling’ online that you’d like to include in your web site design. Or maybe you found some pretty nifty animated Flash do-dads.

And while they might look exciting, they must be used sparingly. Too much animation can be distracting and detract from any useful content.

8. Unprofessional Design and Color Scheme.

Have you seen those websites that seem to have found a use for just about every Crayola color?

Be sure not to do this on your website. Choose only 3-5 complimentary colors for all elements (links, text, backgrounds, headings, etc).

Remember, it is your job to inspire confidence in your visitors. And a professional web site design will help you do this.

7. Poor Quality Graphics.

Often, it is necessary to sacrifice the quality of an image in order to reduce the file size. However, if you are tempted to use poor quality graphics, be sure to exhaust every other option for reducing your website’s load time. This includes, but is not limited to, stripping white space from files, using CSS, and tiling backgrounds.

6. Too Many Ads.

You’re probably eager to make money from your web site and you might have plastered it with ads.

This is a VERY bad idea!

Web surfers visit sites that are useful to them. So, a site drowning in ads offers little to no value. If you must include ads, especially for other websites then try to strike a healthy balance between ads and content. And when including ads, be sure that they are relevant to the subject matter of that web page.

5. Under Construction Pages Within Your Website.

This is a big NO NO in web design.

Do not take your website live if there is still work to be done. And if your site is already live and you’d like to modify a page, be sure to remove that page from the site navigation until it has been revised.

4. Dead Links.

Having dead links on your website is the quickest way to ensure that your visitors leave your site.

To avoid this, verify that all of your links point to pages that do exist. It is also a good idea to create custom error pages in the event that a user requests a page that doesn’t exist.

3. Bad Navigation.

It is important to provide a user-friendly navigation so that visitors can easily find what they are looking for.

Be sure to place the navigation in a consistent location across the whole site so that users do not have to search for it.

2. Slow Loading Pages.

Within the first few seconds of loading a website, users determine whether or not they want to continue. If your site takes a long time to load, most users will never even wait to view your website. Instead, they’ll simply press the Back button and visitor one of your competitors’ websites.

1. Pop-up Ads.

There is no denying that pop-up ads are one of the most effective ways of advertising. However, it is also one of the most effective ways of bothering visitors. And unless your website is exceptionally popular and useful, pop-up ads often scare visitors away.

So now that you know what features may annoy your visitors, you are one step closer to creating a user-friendly site. Of course, there are many other things that can be done to improve a website, but this is a just starting point.

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