Little Things That Ruin Your Website

[snakeair]

I'm sure we can name a lot of things that can ruin a website and the top ones are mentioned in this blog post below. Please take a look at it before responding.

It takes a long time to build a great website and get it optimized so that lots of people can see it. You need design skills, strong content that people actually want to see, then you need to create a plan and execute it by working your network. All these things take time and energy, sometimes a lot of them. But it’s really easy to undo all that hard work with just one or two little things that will completely ruin your site – whether it’s from an SEO or a usability standpoint. Really, if you have a site with great rankings, but is terrible to use, you’re not going to accomplish your goal anyway (make money, raise awareness, etc.).

Here’s just a short list of some things that can really do you in:

Continued at: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/bl...your-site.html

Any thoughts?

[jimtsap]

This article really has a scary picture... I imagined the house to be my website...

Autorun sound, music and videos are really annoying me when I visit a website. So it's the hugest disadvantage for me. 99% I have my own music playing, so the websites audio is just a mess on my ears. The same about goes and for videos, plus it looks like they try to captivate me, which I don't like.

Its better for the visitor to have full control on how and when the information (audio,text,video) will appear on his screen. Hyper texts are made to escape from the linear projection of information (example tv,videos,etc).

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Michael Gray wrote about ads yesterday (more of a SEO point of view but still a usability issue):

I can’t tell you how many websites I visit where the first thing on the page–sometimes even before the post title–is an advertising banner or an adsense block. I made a very conscious decision to show the title, picture, and byline before showing any ads. IMHO nothing screams MFA like a block of ads before content (yes images are content–see my posts on image optimization for more information).

Does the Number of Ads on Your Website Affect Your Linkability

[indybail]

I agree about audio. As soon as my speakers fire up I'm hitting the back button. It's like telemarketing, if your using it you get an automatic NO from me.

[winelady]

Generally I agree about the audio, but just a few days ago I found a site greeting people with a very short and pleasant melody of less than 2 seconds length.
I would add the non-content intro pages to the destroying facts, especially if they do not give any understandable information where you are and what kind of site they start.

[dmvictoria]

The audio/video auto play I find annoying. But, what really gets my goat are those annoying Java Script alert popups on page exit that asks, "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" and then you have to click it to get rid of it.

[snakeair]

Originally Posted by dmvictoria

The audio/video auto play I find annoying. But, what really gets my goat are those annoying Java Script alert popups on page exit that asks, "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" and then you have to click it to get rid of it.

I've ran into some Clickbank products that when you close the sales page, you get a popup, then click the window to close the popup and get another popup. Also the popup's have audio for a double wammy.

[Tityzkul]

i dont like audios too. i mean, a visitor to your website shouldnt be greeted with advertisements. its not proper.

[kunalkundu]

Originally Posted by jimtsap

This article really has a scary picture... I imagined the house to be my website...

Yeh.......
But I don't get what is the relation between the picture and ruining website?
Can u guys explain in details?

[winelady]

Originally Posted by dmvictoria

The audio/video auto play I find annoying. But, what really gets my goat are those annoying Java Script alert popups on page exit that asks, "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" and then you have to click it to get rid of it.

Never seen… do you have an example? I can easily imagine how unnerving it must be!

[JackRT]

I had recently stopped making the first mistake mentioned...

My site had a great (at least for me) theme music well synced with the flash animations (but not excessive animations )... however, you gotta think... would you rather have a quiet moment while buying something or a song playing in your ear??

I made it off by default and let user turn it on if they desire...

[snakeair]

You have to remember that people to surf the internet while at work and there computers do have speakers. Sometimes that audio will get you in trouble.

[prakriti_aryan]

ya i also don`t like audio and video , i think most of people don`t like

[techforums123]

Yes , The inbuilt Video and Music for the same is annoying

[jvndev]

Nice blog post. The third thing that is mentioned in your blog, ads, it is hard to know how much ads being displayed are too much?

[JoseAldo]

I agree that playing music is a definite no-no when it comes to your website...and if you are going to play music PLEASE have a visible and easy to find "mute" button.

[Gardenia~]

...grammar. And people that make totally stupid mistakes, I can't tell you how many sites say that sites must have "good spelling and grammer"

[Mandeep]

Sites that have flash videos set to auto-play are so frustrating. I'm using an old, slow laptop most of the time and high-res flash videos just bring this machine to its knees. I have to close the tab or try to pause the video before everything gets laggy. I wish people would just set their videos to not start until clicked. This prevents blasting the office with sound, and keeps slow machines from getting laggy because of flash.

[stoner3221]

Websites with auto video annoy me some but the over search engine optimized websites where the webmaster seems to have forgotten that a human has to use the website bugs me the most.

[3mints]

i really hate Ads, specially the popup one