Last week I stumbled across a website that really caught my eye but for all the wrong reasons. The site was filled with ads and widgets that only helped to detract from its primary purpose. I don’t know if all these elements were there just to amuse visitors (or annoy) depending on your point of view, but add to that the music which started playing as soon as the site had loaded and I’d quickly had enough and left the site immediately.
Design for Visitors
Websites should be designed purely with visitors in mind, not to showcase a web designer’s talent, which should be evident in every site they design anyway, so with ‘off-putting’ in mind, I am going to list some things that are generally known to make a visitor leave a site as quickly as their mouse can carry them.
Ads
Advertisements themselves aren’t too much of a problem providing they are static ads and not Flash or animated banners because even if not being looked at directly, they often remain in peripheral vision and so continue to be a distraction all the time a visitor is on the site.
Pop-Ups
Most visitors aren’t fans of pop-ups and often don’t return to a site that uses them, and whilst they achieve the desired effect of catching a visitor’s attention, they usually tend to have a negative effect with regards to positive responses.
Music
If visitors wanted to listen to music they would turn on a radio or pop a CD in their players. Sites that inflict music on visitors are simply forcing them to leave.
Scrolling Text
Although this isn’t the worst thing you could find on a website the issue of speed is often a problem because everyone reads at a different pace and as scrolling speeds vary enormously, many visitors just don’t bother with them.
A Matter of Opinion
One major downside of music, animation and other unnecessary devices on a website is increased loading time which is itself another source of irritation and frustration for visitors. I personally prefer plain and simple with nothing getting in the way of finding the information I want, but because what makes a website good or bad is purely subjective, it’s not impossible that the advert and widget-filled is bound to suit some.
Until next time.
