In the past 11 years, we’ve seen a lot of website design ideas. Our clients seem to be a bottomless fountain of “new” and “tricked-out” brainstorms to make their site stand out from the crowd. The problem is that many of these ideas are not being used because they’re just not good for website usability or professionalism. So before you take that fateful leap and ruin your website with a bad idea, check this list first. If you’re idea is on here, go back to the drawing board!
1. Splash Page – Ugh! These should have died a decade ago. A Splash page is nothing more than an introduction (usually a Flash animation) that shows the visitor on a short “movie” before they can get to any real content. When you first visit a website, this can be intriguing, but by your 2nd visit you’ve seen it all and just want to get to information hidden behind that now-annoying graphic display. People hate to wait, and with every year their attention span gets shorter. And though some splash pages have a little link to “skip to the site”, there is also great stigma to adding extra clicks - users often get irritated with even one or two clicks that they feel are unnecessary.
2. Music –
What kind of music to you enjoy listening to?
What kind of music personifies your company?
If those are questions that your potential prospects will need to know before they do business with you, then by all means add music to your website. Chances are, they don’t care. They want to get to your information and start reading about your services. Instead, you force them to search for the music player to turn that music OFF! Music distracts users from what you want them to do (your calls to action) and it can do more harm than good, often making sites seem less professional.
3. Auto-start Videos – Unless I’m on YouTube, I’m not expecting a video, much less to hear a person talk to me as soon as a page opens. Like music, this is distracting and I’m going to want to make it stop while I acclimate to the page. Don’t get me wrong, videos have their place. To use them effectively make sure a summary of the video is on the page (also great for search engines) and don’t make the video start automatically. Let your visitor determine if they want to view the video or just quietly read your content.
4. Mystery Navigation – Also known as “mystery meat” navigation, this is when you decide that using words for your navigation is boring and passé. Icons are used to represent what the content is about. What may be crystal clear to you (like using a can and string for the “Contact” link) can cause confusion for your user. It also means that if your icons aren’t labeled, the user needs to memorize what your content looks like as an icon. Using rollovers to reveal the actual navigation word is not a solution. It only means that the user will now be forced to roll over every button to find what they are looking for. While it’s nice to have some creative elements, just make sure that your first priority is to make your site as easy and intuitive to navigate as possible.
5. Redundant Navigation – One set of navigation does just fine thank you. It’s okay to pull out some especially important navigation bits to highlight within the page (left or right columns) but it’s just not necessary to repeat every single link! If you’re just positive your visitors are not smart enough to catch onto your main navigation, you can add all your links to the bottom of the page for quick reference. But a better solution would be to take a look at your main navigation and find out why it’s not clear enough on it’s own to lead your visitors to the right information.
Are you looking for a website that is creative but won’t make your visitors run the other way? Contact us – we are experts in designing websites that are clean, professional, great looking and (when it’s appropriate) fun!
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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