Things to Avoid on Your Website
by Rich Matheson, Founder of Delphinus Web Design

I'll preface this by reiterating that this document, as well as all of the other Resource documents on this site, is simply my personal opinion.  Many other designers will disagree, as would anyone in an essentially artistic field.  I've been designing websites for almost 10 years, and I've learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn't, or rather, what I perceive to work and what I perceive to be meaningless filler.  The assumed goal here is to produce a professional, useable website which will hopefully lead to increased revenue for your company, membership for your organization, or what have you.

With that said, here is a list, in no particular order, of things you may want to avoid, or at least, think twice about, when planning your site:

Be Careful With Color!

The colors you choose can literally make or break your site.  Before a visitor to your site reads a single word of text, or even looks at your logo (let alone your phone number), the first thing that will catch their attention is the color.  Now, you may want to GRAB that person's attention, so the color combination of hot pink and lime green may seem logical.  Those colors only go together if you want to give a person a headache.  Keep in mind that people are looking at your site on a computer monitor.  Computer monitors tend to cause eye fatigue anyway.  You don't want to add to that by using colors that clash.  I once had a client who was a lawyer (who will remain nameless lest I get sued for libel), who wanted bright yellow and fluorescent green on his site.  This was a corporate attorney, and he wanted his site to look like an easter basket.  Keep your business in mind when choosing colors, and more importantly, think of your target audience.  "Shock value" doesn't work for professionals, unless you own a tennis shoe company or are an energy drink manufacturer.

Animation

I'm not saying animation is a bad thing at all.  In fact, I use it on this very site, if only in moderation.  Some designers (especially a few years ago) love blinking, moving things.  Someone then got the idea of having lots of blinking, moving things on a site, all of which screamed, "LOOK AT ME!!  LOOK AT ME!!  LOOK AT ME!!".  I like to use the analogy of a crying baby in a movie theater.  Yes, it does get your attention, but after about 30 seconds it becomes extremely annoying.  Movement catches the eye, and draws it away from the important stuff.  If someone's reading about why they should patronize your business, and their attention is drawn away from that, they don't fully concentrate on what they're reading, and the impact of the message itself is lost.

"Mystery Meat" Navigation

This is a term I'm borrowing from Jakob Nielsen, widely regarded as THE authority in web usability.  "Mystery Meat" navigation is when you have a bunch of unlabeled buttons serving as your navigation.  Where most sites have buttons labeled "Home", "About Us", Contact Information", et cetera, a "Mystery Meat" site will have a picture of a house, a question mark, and a picture of a telephone.  Essentially, you don't really know where you're going until you click the button.  This is kind of like trying to use a TV remote control in the dark.  Once you're used to it, it's fine, but if you're a first time visitor, you really have no idea what you're dialing up.  This causes frustration, which leads to annoyance, which often leads to someone leaving your site, never coming back, and telling all of their friends never to go there.

Click Here to return to the Resources page.