I must visit 100’s of new sites each and every week because I monitor sites that wish to be listed at my site Community Advertising. And because of this exposure to so many sites, I have developed a stronger opinion on web design. Each day, the love and disgust grows deeper.

Here are my website pet peeves:

Backgrounds:
I don’t give a damn if you use a background or not. But, IF you do, make it so that it doesn’t overwhelm your content. Get real. If your background is so crazy and you have wonderful content I’ll never know because your background took everything away and I left.

Organize:
Put things in order. Sheesh. Organize and put relevant links together. If you want to sell me on your products don’t throw the contact link right in the middle of your product listings. That doesn’t make any sense to me!

Design for Others:
The first thing I learned in designing websites is to not to design a site just to my style and taste. Ultimately, we each want new visitors to our sites so pay attention to how other people will view your site.

Avoid Over Decorating:
Sliced images for iFrames, colored scroll bars, and all the extra goodies are great. But easy killer, they become annoying. And hey, if you’re going to style your scroll bar will you please make sure I can see it still?

Download Times:
Pay attention to how many images and the size of those images that you’re putting on your website. If it takes too long to download with my cable speed, I’m out of here. You’ve lost another visitor and/or potential customer. One thing I find interesting is that Mindy gets on dial-up to test out download times for sites.

It’s also important to keep in mind on this subject, from the hosting side, the more content that has to be downloaded on your site so a visitor can view will result in more bandwidth usage. EASY KILLER!

Colors Matter:
Bright green and hot pink are awesome colors – in moderation. Jesus, what are you doing to my eyes when you throw these colors all over your site? Another issue, make sure that your font color is strong on the background you’re typing on. If they are different shades on the same side of the color wheel you’re so going to loose visitors.

Java:
If you’re going to use Java on your sites, make sure that it is error free. I so hate those little pop-up notices telling me there are Java errors on a site and asking me if I want to continue viewing the site.

Advertising:
Do you want me to see your content AND the advertisements or just the advertisements? Place them correctly. Do those who advertise with you justice and make sure that they are easily seen on your site but don’t throw them into some random line right in the middle of something I’m reading on your site. Are you on crack?

Let’s also add to this: why are you having people pay you for advertising if your site has no page rank? It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me if you’re not noticed by search engines!

Pop-Ups:
How desperate are people for money that they’re now allowing pop-ups on their site for money? I don’t care how much these people will pay me to put pop-ups on my site, it’s not happening. Ah, so annoying!

Free Sites:
If you offer a service that you charge for, you damn well better have your own private domain and hosting. If I see one more freaking pixel site on FreeWebs that charges for memberships I’m going to explode. No way, I’m not giving you money and you can’t pay an easy $25 a year for a real website.

Ask:
Before doing something to your site that you don’t understand, ask someone that might. If I have a problem and take it to Mindy you better believe that the first thing she will ask me is “did you Google it?” I actually started doing this and find now that I ask Mindy fewer questions. She is the brain behind this operation most days so I have to ask something. But when it comes to designing and working with new code and scripts that you don’t understand, get information before you just go messing with shit!

Content:
If you have a 450 pixel area for content on your site don’t insert something in that area that is 500 pixels. A left to right scroll bar is annoying.

Compare:
Just because your site looks good on Internet Explorer (a browser that is not code compliant) doesn’t mean that it will work look great in Firefox or subsequent browsers. Be sure to have these browsers on your computer even if you do not use them. This way you can make sure your site works with all browsers. Realize that not everyone that visits your site will be using your same browser and if something looks off, it’s you that looks stupid.

Music:
It’s so out. Don’t put music on your site if you’re not a music site. Nothing will piss me off more than going to a site that has music on it, not knowing it and suddenly hearing something blaring out of the speakers disrupting my entire house. Leave music off of your site. And if you really MUST have it, make sure that I can choose to play it…don’t force it on me!

More:
If you use WordPress, use the “more” tag when you’re writing. This will allow us to “click to continue reading the story called . . . “ Also, go into options and set a limit to how many posts show on one page. Generally speaking, I am so turned off if the content on your menu and sidebar has ended but you still have 5 posts past that. Limit that shit and allow me to read the rest of your posts by going to the previous page. WordPress has a great setup, utilize it.

P.S. Stop using WordPress for pixel sites! IT SUCKS!

By no means am I the end all know it all of web design. But as a site visitor this is what bugs me. Maybe the next time you design a site for yourself or someone else you’ll take all of this into consideration and will think about the visitor before you throw your style onto everyone. Feel free to express who you are on your site, just make sure the site is still visually appealing when you’re done!

Have fun designing.

Back to my corner now.