Ten Annoying Website Design Mistakes

Why I Just Clicked Away from Your Website

No matter how many web pros have put out good tutorials on web design, people (including businesses) still create annoying websites. I have spent many years on both the visitor side and the design side of web pages and have seen my share of annoying sites (and, in the beginning, probably created a few annoying ones too). The following are ten of the most annoying website design mistakes. If your goal is to really annoy your visitor, I suggest using all of these.

Annoying website design mistakes to avoid

Music in the background:

Unless your web page is a memorial page where a song dedicated to a loved one is appropriate, or some another website where music is appropriate, music is just annoying. Most people will just turn their sound off. Leave the background music off of your site.

Flash

Flash is busy, often takes too long to load, and is annoying. Leave it off unless it is absolutely necessary. Businesses, I am looking at you too. I don't need a flash presentation about your newest flavor of potato chip. Just let me into your site to retrieve the information I came for. Don't make me sit through a commercial.

Lack of "white" space

Verbiage on the page is fantastic but please, do remember to split it into small digestible chunks of information. One large page of text without any breaks is annoying. Make reading information easier on your website visitors: Separate text into small paragraphs separated by a line or two of empty space.

Fancy font.

Fancy fonts for titles or other such text is fine. However, your primary font should be something easily readable on the web (arial or verdana, for instance).

This covers flashing font too. Please don't give your visitor a headache (or seizure) by using unnecessary bells and whistles such as flashing font.

Tiny font (or ridiculously huge font)

Again, be kind to your readers' eyes. Do not use tiny font for your primary text.

Huge graphics

Huge graphics = longer loading time. Longer loading time = visitor loses patience and goes away. Avoid large, byte-heavy graphics.

Too many animated Gifs