Archive for the ‘Bad Web Design’ Category
Dec
2006
Be Careful What You Name Your Website!
December 7th, 2006 at 11:21 pm by stevestuff in Bad Web Design
What were they thinking?
The following are legitimate companies that didn’t spend quite enough time considering how their online names might appear… and be misread:
1. Who Represents is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Website is http://www.whorepresents.com
2. Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at http://www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at http://www.penisland.net
4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at http://www.therapistfinder.com
5. There’s the Italian Power Generator company, http://www.powergenitalia.com
6. And don’t forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales, http://www.molestationnursery.com
7. If you’re looking for IP computer software, there’s always http://www.ipanywhere.com
8. The First Cumming Methodist Church Website is http://www.cummingfirst.com
9. And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Website, http://www.speedofart.com
Nov
2006
8 Web Design Clichés of 2006
November 27th, 2006 at 12:37 am by stevestuff in Bad Web Design
Bandwagon ahoy!
With the advent of Web2.0, AJAX, and other new exciting technologies such as Ruby on Rails and RSS, we’re seeing impressive developments in the technical backdrop to the web. One thing that has persisted throughout the life of the hypertext-enabled web however, is the design cliché - trends or ‘memes’ that catch on amongst a large percentage of web users. We’ve seen dancing hamsters, Animated GIFs, the tag and Netscape Navigator all come and go - but what about the more recent trends?
Nov
2006
Bad design and functionality on websites OMG!
November 22nd, 2006 at 02:14 pm by stevestuff in Bad Web Design
If you HAVE - or propose to GET internet presence, I believe this site is a definite MUST to visit:
Amazing Revelation Number One: not everybody uses Windows XP SP2 with Internet Explorer 6, Flash, all cookies automatically accepted, a maximized window on a 1024×768 32-bit screen, and perfect eyesight. Get it? If your site does not render correctly in browsers other than IE, you have lost a significant percentage of your users. Everybody who uses Mozilla FireFox is alienated. Everybody who uses Linux is alienated. “Resize your browser to…” SHUT UP. “Best viewed with…” NO. Ever heard of XHTML? Ever heard of standardized markup? Try obeying the standards. Many people out there are color-blind to a certain extent. That means your site should look good in greyscale. Don’t use Flash, either …
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Web Design Rant
With all the talk of how to make a great website and ways to keep visitors, it is important to also understand the other side of designing an Internet business. Every day, thousands of websites are finding unique ways to turn away visitors and potential customers. Although many webmasters know about the obvious “turn-offs”, there are many little details that “tick-off” visitors and make them leave …
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About the Author:
Scott J. Patterson designed and promoted his own online store with NO computer experience. To find out how he did it, be sure to check out a FREE COPY of his ebook!
According to a recent study by Stanford University, 46% of Web sales are lost on web sites that lack the critical elements that build value and trust with website visitors. The number one reason the people indicated why they wouldn’t buy from a web site was because it had an unprofessional “look and feel” that lacked credibility and did not “feel” trustworthy …
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WebPagesThatSuck is one of the most controversial sites on the Internet. The two books it spawned, aptly named ‘Web Pages That Suck’ and ‘Son of Web Pages That Suck’ outline usability flaws, design no-nos, and how to create a usable site.Vincent Flanders created Web Pages That Suck to champion his view that we can ‘Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design’.
Go to web Pages That Suck
I’m often asked how slow is too slow for a page to download. And if I provide times (4 seconds, 7 seconds, 10 seconds) someone invariably responds with a comment along the lines of “my page loads slower than that, but we do fine”. My rule of thumb is to build pages that load within 7 seconds on a 56K modem, 10 seconds being the maximum load time.
Gardner research found that 4 seconds was the longest many people would wait for an ecommerce site to load. But what about the most popular pages on the Internet? Stuart Brown did an experiment: Victims of Their Own Success where he evaluated the top 100 sites for page size, load times, and transfer rates. Faster pages seem to be more popular. Even About.com is in there - our home page is too slow. 
Nov
2006
Errors in the Website Can Affect Your SEO
November 16th, 2006 at 10:49 am by stevestuff in Bad Web Design, Search Engine Optimization
First of all your site has to be indexed by the search tools: search engines and web directories.
You need to be leary of using website submission software. This may be quick and easy, but some web directories and search engines do NOT accept automated submissions.
It’s true that manual submission is a time consuming process — you’ll have to read AND follow each search engines’ submission guidelines, to effectively perform the submission but it’s a necessary step.
Let’s say that you submitted your site correctly, you waited a reasonable amount of time - usually a few weeks for the search engines to process your submission, but your site does not appear near the top in the SERPs.
You’re wondering why, right? Well, one or more of the following reasons might apply:
1 - Your submission was not accepted by the search engines especially if you used spamming techniques, such as:
- Repeating keywords in the keyword meta tag or using text in the same color as the background, some search engines might refuse to index your site.
- Page redirection — including cloaking — or building artificial links farms can sometimes be seen as spam by some search engines. These links farms involve building web pages for the sole purpose of creating links to the targeted site.
Some Search Engines also have difficulty in indexing pages that use frames or Flash.
2 - Your submission was accepted, but your site is not listed in the Top 10-30. Because very few people check pages after the first 30 results, you want to be in the Top 10-30. There are many reasons why a site is not listed high.
The most common reasons are:
- The lack of your main keywords in the content of the page, in the title tag and in the description and keyword meta tags. Ultimately it all depends of the search engines’ algorithm - the criteria used by the search engines to rank pages.
- HTML errors. Examples include unclosed tags, unquoted attributes, improperly nested tags, missing the ALT attribute on images. Any of these will affect your site’s accessibility, reducing your potential client pool.A Web site with HTML errors can look fine in Explorer, strange in Firefox or Opera and totally unreadable in a text browser. Although Explorer has the largest market share, an important percentage of net surfers use other browsers. Don’t forget the more than 50 million people in the USA with disabilities. Many of the latter use text/voice browsers.
Other Types of Errors in Web Sites
According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after four seconds they cannot see the page, they leave. And we all know what that means or the success of a Web site.
I not only saw all those errors in sites that are now gone but I also found them in sites that are still alive, including, incredibly, some Fortune 500 companies’ Web sites.
So Do We Dot-Com or Not?
The answer is a resounding YES! But with one condition, learn from your predecessors.
Have your site designed according to W3C Recommendations (the Official HTML coding rules). Yes, this takes time and it’s much easier to use an HTML editor, but the results are much better when properly coded by hand or a good editor such as Dreamweaver. Watch your site’s accessibility and usability. Don’t forget to test and validate the code. Another thing - do yourself a favor - check the spelling on your pages.
Avoid too many gizmos: JavaScripts, widgets, flash, and frames. Bells and whistles will NEVER help your page ranking. In fact, it will hurt your site’s indexing or ranking in the Search Engines and will annoy most of your viewers. So, be sure to use these with care!
Have interesting content in your pages, content that grabs your viewer’s attention. No matter how beautiful your site is, no matter how much professional promotion you made, if the site doesn’t grab viewer’s interest, he will leave — you guessed it — to your competitor sites.
Also, use the title tag, the keyword and description meta tags in your HTML coding (in the head tag) to list targeted keywords from the contents of your pages. This helps the search engines rank your site higher. But you need to limit the keywords to no more than 10.
Promote the site thoroughly. Submit the site properly to search engines and web directories and pay special attention to the link popularity issue- contact webmasters of related sites to ask them to include a link to your site. Yes, it takes time, but it’s worth it.
So, let’s see: do we dot-com or not? You bet we do! There are tremendous opportunities on the Internet. Find your niche, follow the rules, work hard and you’ll make it.
It will not be easy but if you believe in your dream and set realistic expectations, you’ll be successful.
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