Things To Avoid
There are some things that seem stylish but which are in reality great ways to alienate your audience. Over the last decade or so a lot of lessons have been learnt by a combination of usability testing and careful examination of site logs. The wisdom gleaned from these sources advises site designers to avoid using any of the following.
Splash Screens
Back before the turn of the millenium it was considered very stylish to have a splash page as a doorway to the main site experience. They used to sport information about what browser you could view the site with and details of any plug-ins you might require. Nowadays, there’s simply no reason for having one and they can actually harm your site.
Visitors will be annoyed by them, for a start. They just force them to make an extra click in order to reach the content they’re after. Search engines will hate them too. Splash pages have no useful information on them so there’s nothing for the spiders to read and index. There’s not even any technical reason for them. If your site uses Flash there are other, better ways of determining whether a user has the plug-in installed.
Some splash pages are made even more frustrating when they feature Flash animation. Try to imagine it from your average surfer’s point of view. They arrive at your site looking for information or wanting to buy a product. They reach a page and immediately see a “loading 1%” sign which slowly edges up. Then the animation plays - possibly with loud music that cannot be disabled or reduced in volume - but there’s no way to skip to the next page. Eventually, the next page loads. Perhaps. A lot of those visitors are going to click away in disgust before then and never come back.
The only justifiable use of a splash page nowadays is on sites with adult content. In those cases you might want to use one to display a disclaimer so that visitors are forced to click a button indicating that they are over eighteen. It’s almost certainly not legally binding but at least you’ve shown a concession to restricting your content.
Pop-ups
More and more people are using pop-up blockers with their browsers and firewalls so if you want to use a pop-up you’re on a hiding to nothing. They’re also an accessibility nightmare as screenreaders will get confused by them and navigation gets broken.
Sometimes a pop-up can used, perhaps for displaying terms and conditions. Generally though, you should avoid them altogether. If someone has to turn off their pop-up blocker just to view your image gallery they won’t be pleased and may not bother at all.
Pop-unders should also be avoided. These are the windows that open behind your current window and only reveal themselves when you close the main page. These are just as irritating as pop-ups and cause even more problems for screenreaders.
Ultimately, there’s almost always another way of displaying content other than using a pop-up. Even people who don’t know much about the internet know that spam and pop-ups are almost universally hated.
Finally on the subject of pop-ups - don't suggest that the site combines a splash page and pop-up as commonly occurred many years ago. This happened when designers wanted as much control over the browser as possible and would force users to click on an “enter site” link on the splash page that would launch a new window at a specific resolution and would usually remove the menu bars and browser navigation controls for good measure. Nowadays this is recognised as being poor design. The major benefit of the web is the ease with which users can adapt their browsers. If they want larger fonts, they can increase the size. If they want a smaller window, they can decrease it. Don’t take that control out of the hands of your users.
Blinking and Flashing Elements
It’s a huge mistake to use rotating logos and flashing calls to action and they’re also the things that clients often ask for. The reason? Clients want an impressive site but they don’t generally spend a lot of time browsing their site looking for and reading information. What might seem initially impressive becomes tiresome very, very quickly. If you want moving elements on your page to draw attention to particular items, consider using a very quick animation every thirty seconds or so. This won’t be nearly so annoying.
Animated elements are also generally much bigger than regular images or require the use of plug-ins such as Flash. This obviously pushes up the page weight, increases loading times and is more costly to develop. Worst of all, users can disable any of these elements using the controls in their browser. It’s a colossal waste of time and money. Stick to good design and you won’t need gimmicks to attract and impress users.
Embedded Sounds
If you want to use sound on a site, give your users the ability to turn it off and never set it to play by default. A lot of people surf the web in their offices and there’s nothing like a sudden blast of music coming out of the speakers to draw the attention of the boss. Music on sites is generally regarded as tacky and remember that music is also extremely divisive. You don’t want to lose potential customers or subscribers just because they really, really hate James Blunt but you think he’s a genius.
Small Fonts
Be careful with your font sizes. Many websites make the mistake of using very, very small font sizes and giving their users no means to increase the size. Remember that some people run their desktops at high resolutions and what looked good at 800 by 600 may be unreadable at 1600 by 1200. Stick to a base font size of at least 12 pixels, preferably 14 pixels.