Ten Things I Hate About Your Website (6-10)
Well, this is the second part of the abuse. Remember, this is therapy for myself, so I can stand to surf the web, and it is good advice for you so you don’t become a pet peeve of mine. Yah, I am a bit harsh, but so is life. If you want to have a nice site, don’t include any of these things I complain about in your site.
6. Visible Counters
When the web first was introduced, counters were cutting edge technology. Oooh, look they can tell how many people have been to their site. Big Deal. Unless you are own the Beanie Babies® site, and have, last time I checked, 2,667,191,485 hits. Otherwise, you pretty much say. Hey! look at how many people HAVEN’T been to my web site! Oh, and starting a site at 10,000 doesn’t impress anyone either. My suggestion, hide the damn thing so only you can see it. A counter is meant to track the amount of traffic, not create an ugly image on your site. They are ugly, no matter what font you display it in. Copy the same code and paste it into a blank HTML document. Then upload it on the server. Hide the first counter, and display the second one on the blank page. They should have the same number, and you can check the blank page from the web to see what the traffic reports are. My suggestion, get a hosting company that produces statistics for you. There are plenty of them out there. If you can’t figure out how to do anything else, get a text based counter, and make the text the same color as the background.
7. Multiple Banners
Banners are not meant to be Christmas ornaments people. So many sites have more than ten banners, and they just keep scrolling and scrolling down, and down, and…. Give me a break! A banner at the bottom of a page is fine, but at the top and the bottom is even too much. Unless you are being paid big bucks, of course! I am referring to the people with ‘banner exchange’ crap all over their sites. You can’t be considered a good designer if half the page is dancing around with advertisements. Please, keep it to a minimum before I puke.
8. One Big Image
I understand that there is a need for graphics on a web page. But not everything has to be an image! You can break up those images and make them as small as possible. A user gets bored after about 5 seconds of waiting. If you site doesn’t load in 20 seconds, forget it. You will lose more people than you will gain. It isn’t a brochure! It is an information resource! If you are an art gallery, and need big graphics, at least offer thumbnails. But I am sure not everyone is a damn art gallery.
9. Front Page Themes Like
Please don’t use default themes and then sell yourself as a web designer. You are really only kidding yourself, and screwing your clients (if you get anyone stupid enough to have you design a site with Front Page themes). At least do yourself a favor and learn HTML. There may be a lot of themes in the program, but think of all of the people that use that program. If you are just doing your own biz site, pay someone to at least create some professional graphics for you. Image is everything, don’t look like a cheap skate, you only set a bad example for the real web designers in the world.
10. “Companies” without domain names
I saved this one for last because there is so much of this crap out there. Come ‘on, who are you trying to fool? If anything you should consider yourself a thief! There are people out there spending big bucks trying to survive, with their own domain, paying hosting fees, etc. Then the rest of the net is flooded with crap sites selling “professional web design services for a dollar!” which screws the people that do the professional web design out of clients! Then they get turned off to going with design firms over the web, and go to some local schmuck because they got screwed by someone who “claimed” to be a real designer. Why not contribute to the flooding of the market, and just stick to what you do already, doctor, waitress, toilet scrubber. “Everyone has to start somewhere”, I know, but at least get your own friggin domain. You will have a lot of people laugh at you, and not take you seriously if you don’t. And you may create some enemies,like me, as well.
Well, I hope this helps out some of you. If not then, oh well. Until next time, I am signing off….anonymously.
Author: Gina Hutchings
Copyright Lunar Media Inc
Chicago Web Design
