Make Your Site User Friendly – Part 1 of 3

One of the things I do while building websites is cruise through those belonging to others. I have seen over thousands of websites in the last couple of years, and I have decided to compile a list of things that you should NOT do on your website. Although optimizing for spiders is important, if people don’t like the look of your site, you’ve wasted your time.

Do not put music on your site. I happen to like listening to my own music while I work, so when I’m surfing, I find it very frustrating to go onto a site that tries to play over my music. Even if the site itself is quite nice, I leave right away so I don’t miss any of the music I actually want to listen to.

If you have a particular theme song that you would like people to hear, allow them to click on a button to listen to it. Then you won’t annoy people like me who are looking for information, not music.

Moving figures on a web page are a huge distraction. This includes anything from a trail after the mouse to an advertisement that keeps flashing. This removes professionalism from the site, and sometimes can be so irritating that people can’t read the information that is provided. This includes Flash – some people can’t play it on their computers. Develop your site so that everyone can use it, no matter how old their computer is.

One of the biggest mistakes I have seen is an enter page. The more times people have to click their mouse to get to the index page, the less likely they are to arrive.

Distracting backgrounds, such as those with patterns or dark colors, merely prove that the webmaster can fiddle with a paint palette. These backgrounds detract from the content, and like moving figures, make it difficult for people to stay on the page or read what is written. A plain white background is the most professional way to go.

Along with the dark background often comes bright writing that’s hard to see. I don’t understand how people who build these sites can look at their pages long enough to write them! These hurt my eyes, and I imagine they hurt any potential buyer’s eyes as well.