PERSONAL WEBSITE - WEBSITE DESIGN - 09.12.2019

What not to do with your website

Website builders sometimes unwittingly make unforgivable mistakes. We have collected some examples of common blunders for you. Surely you can do better, can’t you?

Multi-coloured chaos

Norwegian company Arngren ( http://www.arngren.net ) was a local pioneer in mail-order sales of electronics, and its website still looks like a cheap and completely chaotic advertising leaflet. True, the Index section gives you a slightly better view of the offer at their web shop, but otherwise you will find no trace of any navigation here, and all the different text colours only increase the chaos.

Illegible texts

Pacific Northwest X-Ray Inc. ( http://www.pnwx.com ) is an American radiology equipment retailer. The combination of yellow text and a bluish background makes it very hard for visitors to find the right device. In addition, the navigation menus are neglected completely. For example, returning to the homepage is only possible via your browser’s Back button.

Flash animations and music

The website of the Polish charcoal dealer Patimex ( http://www.patimex.com ) abuses Flash technology and floods you with unsolicited animations and music. Flash is to be avoided these days because the Google search engine and Chrome browser will stop supporting this technology in near the future.

Scrolling images

Gates N Fences ( http://www.gatesnfences.com ), a small Miami company, has crammed the homepage of its website with far too much information. On the left there is a menu bar, which is a good thing (although we would prefer to see it at the top), but unfortunately the text on the navigation buttons is often very hard to read. And if you click on the Custom Driveway Gates link, you will land at a page where pictures automatically scroll from right to left - you have to be a able to aim very well in order to click on them! At the same time, an irritating Buy Now icon is constantly flying across the screen from left to right - its purpose eludes us completely.

Carrousel

The University of Advancing Technology ( https://www.uat.edu ) presents its different degrees as pictures in a rotating carousel, and you can only click on the one that comes up front. On top of that, the text on the pictures is very hard to read. At the bottom, there’s an extra menu bar where the windows pop up every now and then for no reason.

Little content

Suzanne Collins’ site (author of The Hunger Games - http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com ) has so little content that you wonder what its purpose is. If you click on any book cover nothing happens. And when you open the Works section, you will land on the same screen showing books, awards and reviews, but no descriptions or details.

More examples

Weblium ( http://bit.ly/35B6WK4 ) and Ranking by SEO ( https://blog.rankingbyseo.com/bad-websites ) have more examples. Some websites, such as Bella De Soto ( http://www.bellads.info ), show what you should definitely not do. Tip. You can find some other examples, and useful tips on good web design, with Mockplus ( http://bit.ly/37GfkK2 ).

Definitely avoid using Flash on your website, since both the Google search engine and the Chrome browser will stop supporting this technology in the future. Plus steer clear of the other errors illustrated above.

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