In my spare time I like to Stumble, a lot. Occasionally stumbling will pull out a load of crap, and other times it will pull out a gem like this. It’s not a recent post but it’s something I firmly agree with and think that every person who is thinking about designing a website should read.

Josia Cole has compiled a list of 19 top tips of what NOT to do when designing websites for commercial use. It’s not your normal “top tips” list full of smack-in-your-face obvious suggestions but a list of those things you probably wouldn’t have thought of yourself but you see time and time again on corporate websites that should know better.

I would recommend you read the full article to see the explanations behind each suggestion, but to summarise:

  1. Resizing your visitors browser window, Bad!
  2. Having to launch your main site in a popup window, Bad!
  3. High and low bandwidth variants? Bad!
  4. 100% Flash? Very Bad!
  5. Fancy non-standard navigation, Bad!
  6. Print designers shouldn’t design websites.
  7. Content is king, hire a copywriter if you don’t have good content.
  8. Is your site Firefox compatible? It should be!
  9. No Frontpage, blinking or scrolling text, popups, font downloads or Flash intros.
  10. If you use media, make sure it doesn’t start up automatically.
  11. Use text navigation instead of images, image maps are not cool.
  12. No drop downs, use nested categories and a site map instead.
  13. Need to search to find content? Use a site map!
  14. Keep home page size to a minimum
  15. Keep the home page simple, with bold call-to-action.
  16. Do not contrain the users path through your site.
  17. Using video? Make it Flash, no exceptions.
  18. Do not hide links with mouseovers.
  19. Just because a technology is new, you do not have to use it.

I agree with a lot of what is described here, and in addition I will be adding my own suggestions in a future post. If you are writing websites for business or are considering writing commercial sites in the future make sure you read this article and avoid these common pitfalls.

Bookmark and Share