10 Things About Your Site That Will Make Me Cringe

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{Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from the lovely, Emily Thompson. Thank you, Emily, for helping us make our sites less cringe-inducing and making this post super fun–I laughed out loud multiple times!}

Being a web designer and developer has had a very serious adverse reaction on me. Completely unexpected. A serious drawback, indeed.

I have become a web snob.

What this means is that I sometimes find it hard to try a new restaurant if their website isn’t kickin’. I sometimes can’t bring myself to purchase something I feel I almost can’t live without (you know, like that third pair of black leather pumps) unless the site is easy to navigate. It’s a side effect that has limited my life’s choices. I find it hard to respect a company that doesn’t respect themselves or my field by hiring someone to make sure they’re putting their best face forward.

On the upside, it has definitely made me a better consultant and designer.

It also means I can give you leg up.

Following is a list of the top ten things about a website that will make cringe faster than the thought of anyone’s parents… you know. *cringe*

Disclaimer: This is a list of my own annoyances and opinions. It does not mean that if you use them then your site is evil. It just might make me cringe a bit.

1. Splash Pages

Splash pages are a website trend that just won’t die. From a design point of view, I see the appeal. I do, promise. They are a chance to hit your visitors with the best of your design savvy and/or products.

On the other hand – the bigger hand – having a splash page adds a whole click to what your customer has to do to actually get to your goods. And that one whole click is not necessary. Or good. Not to mention the fact that animated splash pages can take much to long to load.

It’s all about usability, folks, and a splash page is not user-friendly. (That’s the developer in me talking, holding the weaker designer part back from contradicting.)

Die, please, splash page fad.

2. Animations

Speaking of animation, let me mention that they bug me. I will say that there are occasionally times when animations are cool, but only when they’re very understated. Very understated. But a good rule of thumb: don’t even try to toe that line.

Note: This does not apply to animated slide shows, which I think are great, but rather bobbly head dogs and other ridiculous nonsense. [Enters: memory of a nightmare of a site with a microwave telling me I should buy their pizza.]

3. Music

Music is another of those nasty website trends that won’t just move on to a better place. Luckily, it has died out in most areas, but photography sites in particular can’t seem to let go.

My biggest issue? Just by having music on your site, you’re making your site inaccessible to a very large portion of people visiting your site from a library, office cubicle, classroom, or any other quiet place imaginable. They’ll load your page, hear the music, X it out immediately, blush, and duck their head. Do you really want to remove every one of those people from your potential client list?

Not to mention you’re totally interrupting my Beats Antique jam session. Not cool.

4. No Coherent Style

Want to add a ton of legitimacy to your site? All you have to do is be consistent. {Click to tweet that little nugget.} Use a single color for all non-linked text. Use the same font-size for all text. Make sure your list layouts are cohesive across all your pages. Really, it’s that simple. And it keeps my eye from twitching.

5. Too Many Fonts

Rehitting on having a coherent style, do yourself and your readers/customers a favor and don’t get too font-happy. I know fonts are cool, trust me. I have a gazillion. But make yourself proud and use some self-control.

A good design guideline is to use 3-4. I usually try to stick to 3. And your logo fonts are included in this count.

Do yourself another favor and restrain from using cutesy fonts for your body text. That makes my eye twitch too, and is really hard to read for everyone else. Our eyes have been trained to read regular site fonts very easily, and they were chosen all those years ago because they are easy to read.

6. Centered Text

Unless there is a really good reason, like perhaps you’re from a society who can’t process text written with left or right justification, never ever publish all of your text as anything other than left-justified. Even if you think it looks kind of weird because the text is short, it looks even weirder to everyone who tries to read it.

And there’s a cultural reason for this that goes back hundreds of years before us (see ma, that linguistic anthropology class wasn’t totally useless). The English language, as well as hundreds others, are meant to be read with left-justification. You really want to challenge that?

7. Too Much Text

The web is evolving into a place where shortness rules, which would make me much more happy with my 5’3” stature, if only that was the shortness that applied here. Folks have a shorter attention span than ever. What does this mean for you? Learn to summarize like a pro. Don’t say in 4 paragraphs what can be said in 4 sentences.

And learn to keep paragraphs short. (See what I did there?)

8. Lack of, or Really Horrible, Photography

Folks don’t like lots of text, but they like pretty pictures. Pretty pictures with a cohesive style. Just wander around Pinterest. Who’s getting pinned most often? Those with awesome photos, obviously.

Photos can make or ruin your website. Put out $5000 for a new site? No one will look if your photos aren’t fab. Have a limited budget and can’t afford good photography AND an awesome site? Choose photography. {Click to tweet that little nugget.} No one will pay attention to your cheap template if they’re too busy drooling over your photographs. (And that’s a big deal for a web designer to say.)

9. Links Don’t Look Like Links

Ah! Few things will get me frustrated with a site more than having to search for links, or being fooled into thinking a link isn’t a link.

Decide on a style for your link that heavily contrasts from you body text. This can be a new color or underlined, or both.

Now, don’t even think about underlining any other text so that it looks like a link when it’s not. If you use a lot of underlining, then choose a link style that is simply a contrasting color. And make sure it’s very contrasting. Choosing a link color that is eerily similar to your body text without underlining is a sure-fire way to make sure no one ever sees it.

10. No Search Function

Ok, I saved this one for last because it’s only half true, and because not making an exception makes me a massive hypocrite, as two of my own sites don’t have search functions.

When a site has a large amount of content (like a blog, or a site with lots of pages) a search function is so terribly necessary. Visitors are going to get frustrated and leave just out of principle, or maybe that’s just me.

However, if your site just has a few pages, which are very easily navigable, then a search function isn’t necessarily required, but it is still a pretty good rule of thumb.

Final Rule

To sum these up, remember one very important thing: usability before design. There are no clear laws of web design, as each site, audience, purpose is different, except for that one. I know, I know. My designer half is kicking and screaming inside. But it’s true. Don’t design for yourself, design for your audience. (And your audience is listening to their own tunes right now.)

I hope you can take some of these and use them in the design of your own blog or site. Maybe I even caught some of you in a place where you thought, “Omg, I totally do that,” and you’re now going to go fix it.

Goodness knows, the less I cringe, the happier I am.

What are your pet peeves in the world of websites? Or want to prove me fabulously wrong? Show me!

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Emily Thompson is a web designer/developer for her studio, emmarie Web Design. She also blogs at emmarie Designs and teaches small creative businesses how to start and grow their business online at Indie Shopography. When not designing and inspiring, she’s chasing her 3-year old daughter and/or boxer pup, or hiding from them both.

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