Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

One of my pet peeves (along with everything that was said above) is a website with typos and bad grammar. Bad English kills me! And typos only shows the company does not care much for their site.

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Andre Costa DaCosta Chocolates, LLC www.DaCostaChocolates.com

Neon colors.

Especially when they`re flashing.

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PeerSight, e-enabled roundtables for small business http://www.peersightonline.com

This is good my fellow SuNsters, so here`s a short list of what we hate the most (in no particular order, that`s for a poll next week!):

• Sites designed for a single browser, typically Microsoft Internet Explorer.
  
  
• Sites designed for a single platform, typically Windows (which is, of course, made up of 4 or 5 different, usually non-compatible, versions at any one given time).
  
  
• Sites with neon, especially if it is flashing at you.
  
  
• Sites that blast any type of audio the moment they are loaded, and then give you no options for turning it off.
  
  
• Sites with hyooge blocks of non-formatted, run-on text with no breaks.  Then compound the problem by putting it on a background that makes it even more impossible to read.
  
  
• Sites that offer you a great deal, or some type of really valuable information, but then make it impossible to actually find.
  
  
• Sites that use flashy Flash or any form of cool new technology just for the sake of being able to say, "Hey, my site has cool new technology that does absolutely nothing for you.  But it`s Cool!!!"
  
  
• Sites with typos and bad grammar.
  
  
• Sites that use pop-ups, pop-unders or any type of advertising that blocks the actual content of the site.
  
  
• Sites that are composed of one large, sliced and then re-stitched image.

Hmmm, not a bad list to stay away from I`d say.  Are there more?  I`m sure there is and we want to hear about them!!!

R-



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Quaerite Primum Regnum

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
~ Oscar Levant ~

Twitter: @rossb

Okay, here`s another pet peeve: Sites that have overly busy home pages. This was especially prevalent during the "portal" era. It lingers on in the financial sector.


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Design & Consulting | | Water Harvesting

I`ll add my spare change.

I don`t think its as prevalent as much these days but. I cant stand some sites (usually graphics designers) who use very tiny cryptic hard to figure out flash based navigation. Especially when each Link has to loading progress bar of its own.

I`ve came upon some web sites lately where the type was tiny plus
reverse white on a dark background. I couldn`t read it, even with my
reading glasses.

When setting the type size for your web site, please remember some of
the people reading it may be over 40.
     

If the designers creating those sites had validated them properly, you would not be seeing pproblems as above--typically these are Front Page sites (known in my circle as the "f word")... but there are too many amateurs out there billing themselves as professionals because the industry is still young and does not have any real "rules".. these are still being developed through litigation. Ultimately we will need licensing, and I for one would welcome it.

Another pet peeve of mine is sites that load SLOOOOOWWW... there is no excuse for that. Close to half of the country still has only dialup. I also don`t care for entry pages (typically in Flash) unless there is good reason to use them--I expect it on entertainment sites, but not on a business site where the user basically wants to get some info, get in and get out. And always, ALWAYS there should be a way to bypass those Flash entry pages.

Re the community college site... from what I`ve seen of the people coming out with a web design degree from these places they are completely unprepared for real world web design. The teachers have not been real world web designers; they are  teaching from a book or software package and way too much has been left out. The books are way out of date by the time they get on the shelves, but having students pay for books, rather than learning from the web itself where the latest info is located, builds income for the college. They really need a mentoring program in place so that these students learn from designers in the field... GOOD designers, that is.

Heh heh - did somebody say PET PEEVE?  (That`s a joke. My blog is about pet peeves.)

I`d have to say dark backgrounds bother me. Annoying midi music (it`s like elevator music). Forms done in Flash (because I can`t use Roboform to fill them in). Business sites that look amateur. Sites that look like they were coded only.  Sites done in multiple fonts. Sites done in Times New Roman (shows me that they didn`t make the effort to change the default font). Splash pages - especially in Flash that don`t have a "skip" link. Using common animated GIFs  (remember all of those spinning globes in the 90s?). Web templates with angels or cherubs or teddy bears on them. Graphics of "faeries". Man...I could go on and on.

I hate sites that don`t let you back out.  I got stuck on one today and had to shut down explorer and start over. 

We`ve mentioned Flash, which is very valid, but I want to specifically point out FLASH INTRODUCTIONS. They are double-plus bad when there isn`t a `skip` option. Sure, they`re swanky the first time I come to a site but DON`T MAKE ME WATCH IT EVERY SINGLE TIME; I`ll stop going to the site before I stop caring about that time waster.

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Creative Principal - Vox Pop Design http://voxpopdesign.com (801) 953-3805