Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002

the Guru

Summary:
Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines.
As the Web grows, websites continue to come up with ways to annoy users. Following are ten design mistakes that were particularly good at punishing users and costing site owners business in 2002.


1. No Prices
No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B, where most "enterprise solutions" are presented so that you can't tell whether they are suited for 100 people or 100,000 people. Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line. We have miles of videotape of users asking "Where's the price?" while tearing their hair out.
Even B2C sites often make the associated mistake of forgetting prices in product lists, such as category pages or search results. Knowing the price is key in both situations; it lets users differentiate among products and click through to the most relevant ones.

2. Inflexible Search Engines
Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody.
A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document’s importance. Much better if your search engine calls out "best bets" at the top of the list -- especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.

3. Horizontal Scrolling
Users hate scrolling left to right. Vertical scrolling seems to be okay, maybe because it's much more common.
Web pages that require horizontal scrolling in standard-sized windows, such as 800x600 pixels, are particularly annoying. For some reason, many websites seem to be optimized for 805-pixel-wide browser windows, even though this resolution is pretty rare and the extra five pixels offer little relative to the annoyance of horizontal scrolling (and the space consumed by the horizontal scrollbar).

4. Fixed Font Size
Style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.
Respect the user's preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms -- not as an absolute number of pixels.

5. Blocks of Text
A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read.
Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:

subheads
bulleted lists
highlighted keywords
short paragraphs
the inverted pyramid
a simple writing style, and
de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

6. JavaScript in Links
Links are the Web's basic building blocks, and users' ability to understand them and to use various browser features correctly is key to enhancing their online skills.
Links that don't behave as expected undermine users' understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser's "open in new window" command -- assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser’s standard behavior.

Users deserve to control their own destiny. Computers that behave consistently empower people by letting them use their own tools and wield them accurately.

7. Infrequently Asked Questions in FAQ
Too many websites have FAQs that list questions the company wished users would ask. No good. FAQs have a simplistic information design that does not scale well. They must be reserved for frequently asked questions, since that's the only thing that makes a FAQ a useful website feature. Infrequently asked questions undermine users' trust in the website and damage their understanding of its navigation.
8. Collecting Email Addresses Without a Privacy Policy
Users are getting very protective of their inboxes. Every time a website asks for an email address, users react negatively in user testing.
Don't assume that people will sign up for a newsletter just because it's free. You have to tell them, right there, what they will get and how frequently it will hit their mailboxes. Also, you must provide an explicit privacy statement or an opt-in checkbox right next to the entry field. Otherwise, you have little hope of collecting email addresses other than mickey@mouse.com.

9. URL > 75 Characters
Long URLs break the Web's social navigation because they make it virtually impossible to email a friend a recommendation to visit a Web page. If the URL is too long to show in the browser's address field, many users won't know how to select it. If the URL breaks across multiple lines in the email, most recipients won't know how to glue the pieces back together.
The result? No viral marketing, just because your URLs are too long. Bad way to lose business.

10. Mailto Links in Unexpected Locations
When you click a link on the Web, what do you expect? To get a new page that contains information about the anchor you just clicked.
What don't you expect? To spawn an email program that demands that you write stuff rather than read it.

Mailto links should be used on anchors that explicitly indicate that they're email addresses, either by their format (donald@duck.com) or their wording (send email to customer support). Don't place mailto links on names; clicking on people's names should usually lead to their biography.

Again, interaction design must meet users' expectations. The more that things behave consistently, the more users understand what they can do and the greater their sense of system mastery. Violated expectations create a sense of oppression, where technology rules humans and reduces their ability to steer the interaction.

dahamsta

One of the things that annoyed me most in 2002 was when people neglect to attribute postings correctly. So while a few more naive Boards members might think that the Guru was bordering on genius with his overwhelming understanding of usability as it related to the web, this piece was actually written by the anal but wonderful Jakob Neilsen, who because of the lack of credit would be wholly justified in suing the ass off Boards.ie and of course the Guru for IP theft.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html

adam

the Guru

jesus I must remember that for the next time

Sorry adam credit where credit is due

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html

and the Email came to me from http://www.webreference.com/

dahamsta

Gods, that was way too easy. It tooks ages to break Boston's non-attributing hymen. Bastard.

adam

Gordon

lol


Whats it called when you scroll and the background stays fixed? I hate that.

miju

as far as I know Gordon it's called WATERMARKING whe you scroll and the background doesn't move

donaloconnor

another 1 is always use a TFT when designing sites, as it is so sharp, u will see things very clearly. CRTs make graphics look ok but when u view them on tft the quality look crap...so if its ok on TFT, it looks def ok on CRT

Snowball

11. FrontPage
FrontPage sux ass and should not be used

as u can see I love thing usefull and insitfull product from a company who after over 20 years have 1 half decent product, 2k

donaloconnor

Yes Frontpage is a big no1 mistake.......Dreamweaver all the way

miju

yeah Frontpage sucks ass Dreamweaver is excellent but I still prefer just plain old notepad. Afterall I started on notepad and I'll damn well finish on it as well.