Just as there are certain signs that show how old we are, there are some tell-tale signs showing the age of a website.
In the last century, websites were still comparatively new. I created my first website in 1996 and looking back, it was dreadful. There are so many signs....
1. Opening links in a new window. This was very popular in the dark ages. The idea was to keep people on your own site. What happened, in fact, was that people complained that the back button was 'broken'. Internet users are much smarter now; they know how to navigate back to your site, even if you do direct them to another.
2. "Under construction". Remember when these pages used to have cutesy graphics of men in hard hats? Arrrrgh! But sites should never have 'under construction' or 'coming soon'. If you really can't be bothered to write a couple of paragraphs, don't launch your site. Furthermore, 'coming' soon pages are a disaster for search engines.
3. Underestimating the viewer. You don't have to put links in your copy saying 'click here for our menu' when you have a perfectly good menu link in your navigation. You certainly don't need anything blinking or scrolling. (Both of which, incidentally are against Section 508 recommendations). With a well-designed navigation, your viewers will be perfectly capable of finding their way around; they don't need neon signposts everywhere.
4. Surprising the viewer. This is something that people complain about so much. If they see a link on a website they expect it, understandably, to go to a page - not to a PDF, a Word document or, heaven forbid, open an empty email.
5. Mentioned in # 3 - text links in copy. This is an acceptable convention in wikis and blogs but NOT on a website. What is the viewer to do? "Oh, I am interested in reading this but here's a link. Should I carry on reading or click this link? Oh I don't know ... er ..." This isn't the way you want your valuable visitors to feel.
6. Pop up windows. In the early days, it was considered cool for images and various content to open in a pop up window. Nowadays, just about everyone has pop up blockers so the impression will be that your website just doesn't work.
7. Forms with more than half a dozen fields. At a client's request, I once created for form with 254 fields. Needless to say, no-one ever filled it out. The same goes for required fields. If I am filling out a form that required my phone number, I go somewhere else. In the majority of cases, name, email address and comments should be enough.
8. Animated gifs. Remember that awful rotating email thing? Well, any animated gif is just as annoying.
9. Out-of-date information. Is your website still showing your holiday menu in January? That just shows your viewers that you don't care. Pay attention to autoresponders too; I had an automated message the other day which started with the usual I am out of the office and ended with Happy Thanksgiving.
10. Information in those scrolly little windows. Why? Because you can? They are extremely annoying. The trouble is that many 'designers' learn new tricks and want to use them. Don't let your website be a guinea pig.
... and the list goes on - hit counters, email this page to a friend, guestbooks, make this your homepage, colored scrollbars, cursors that become butterflies or some other image, loud music with no volume control, excessive flash, long-winded content, websites that don't work in all browsers, long load times, poor spelling and grammar, excessive capitalization, use of different fonts, text as graphics, lack of original content, incorrect coding of special characters, lack of good statistics, black hat SEO techniques, email addresses which are not encrypted ... you do know that I could continue all night?
Sorry, I'm hungry!
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