Bad website designs

For our second week, we started by looking at various websites and design principles in order to learn what makes a good website, design and content wise. Some of these design principles are quite straightforward - don't use too many flashy images, don't use too many frames, make sure your font color is readable...It seems that more often than not, web designers have a problem with using too much rather than not enough. Readers actually prefer a completely blank, plain page to a flashy one giving you epileptic seizures!

What seemed to be a little more hard to control was navigation. I read about a term called "Mystery Meat Navigation," which basically describes a website which looks like it has really great design but is really nearly impossible to walk through. One example of this was the Leo Burnett website, which was made all in flash and seemed really edgy and creative. However, half of the time when I clicked a link it brought me back to the homepage, or to a very small page I wasn't able to resize.

I really liked one of the statements I read: Remember that the people looking at your website spend most of their time on other websites. If you try to come up with a brand-new, snappy navigation that is a unique experience compared to the rest of the web - your visitors won't like it. Somewhat creative designs are good, but not if they modify every single rule of navigation people are used to. That's why it's generally a good idea to stick to elements such as headers, sidebars, etc. Most of the design principles I read recommended not to create entirely Flash-based websites, as these are all eye candy, are hard to read and impossible to access to users with low bandwidth. I read the rule that you have 5 seconds to show some content on the page before the user gets bored and closes your website. I think this is a good number, though it might be a little longer for people with low bandwidth who are expecting it to take a while.

Another section I read about was making your site accessible to the blind, color-blind, deaf, paralyzed...many of the tips were small things that I hadn't thought about but which can make all the difference to these people. If you set your font-size, for example, it's impossible for the user to resize it and read it. It's better to use relative font measures such as ems. If you set your font to be size 0.9 ems, for example, it'll be a little smaller than the rest but you can still resize it. Another thing that is important for the blind is to make sure your links are descriptive, as often a special program will generate a list of all the links on the page and read them out loud, so the blind person can select one. But that's only useful if your links are descriptive: how do you know where the link "here" is going to take you if you can't read the text surrounding it?

I also went to another website with advice about web design, which was itself very well designed - Ungarbage. I learnt about a screen reading software called JAWS, which is the reference browser for the blind. Another of its functions is to read the names of all the tabs so that the blind person can switch. Once again, however, this is useless if your pages do not have specific, informative titles. Since JAWS is a free program, I think it would be a good idea to open my finished website with it in order to judge whether or not my website really is accessible to everyone.

Finally, I checked a website called listing faulty website designs, called Web Pages That Suck. While some of the examples were too obviously horrible to really teach you anything - for example, this Christian website with a moving background or this reference website on something quite obscure. However, I think that what I saw from all these website is that it's always better to follow simplicity over effects. If your page is a little too simple, no one will complain, but if it's full of effects, visitors will run away from it at the speed of light!

One last pet peeve of mine which wasn't listed on these websites but annoys me on a regular basis is member-only content. I hate having to join a website, which can take 5-10mn, without even knowing what is on it. I think most registration processes take too long - what really is the point of filling in your address, your zip code, and then confirming through two e-mails? I would like to keep the process as simple as possible on my website, if I have registrations.

Flanders, Vincent. Websites That Suck. 1996. 16 March 2010 <>

Kyrnin, Jennifer. "What Design Scares You? Reader Responses." About.com. 16 March 2010 <>

Shannon, Ross. Accessibility: Make Your Website Easy To Use For Everybody. 16 March 2010 <>

Lynch and Harton. "Sidebar: A List of Reminders." Web Guide. Pair Networks. 17 March 2010 <>

Marreiros, Mourylise. Ungarbage. 2007. 20 March 2010 <>

"Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. " 2009. W3C. W3C Networks. 21 March 2010

W3 Schools. 1999. Refnes Data. 21 March 2010 <>