{"id":835,"date":"2003-01-02T17:05:51","date_gmt":"2003-01-03T09:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/01\/03\/top-ten-web-design-mistakes\/"},"modified":"2020-01-02T10:18:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T18:18:09","slug":"top-ten-web-design-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/01\/02\/top-ten-web-design-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Top ten web design mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15559,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/useit.com\\\/alertbox\\\/20021223.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.nngroup.com\\\/alertbox\\\/20021223.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:15560,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.useit.com\\\/papers\\\/webwriting&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20121014041912\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.useit.com\\\/papers\\\/webwriting\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 20:04:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-17 13:58:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-17 13:58:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Usability guru Jakob Nielsen posted his list of the <a href=\"http:\/\/useit.com\/alertbox\/20021223.html\" title=\"Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002\">year&#8217;s top ten web design mistakes<\/a>, and while it&#8217;s aimed more at commercial sites, I thought I&#8217;d take a quick gander and see if there are any that I should worry about.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>No prices<\/strong>: Hrm. Well, in general, I&#8217;d say that this one doesn&#8217;t apply. However, let it be said for the record that I&#8217;m often fairly cheap. Even free, given the right circumstances!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Inflexible search engines<\/strong>: Unfortunately, there&#8217;s not much I can do about this one. The search page for my site is nice and powerful, but I&#8217;m not enough of a coder to tell it how to correct for spelling errors. Bummer, too \u2014 that&#8217;s a nice feature.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Horizontal scrolling<\/strong>: I try to avoid this one, however on a smaller screen or resolution, my <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/archives.html\" title=\"Eclecticism Archives\">archives page<\/a> might need scrolling. Right now, I like the format I&#8217;m using, though, and until I find a better one, this will work. Anyone have any suggestions for a different design?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fixed font size<\/strong>: Yay! I got away from this one during my last site redesign. Something I don&#8217;t have to make cute comments or excuses for! :D<\/li>\n<li><strong>Blocks of text<\/strong>: Guilty. <em>Very<\/em> guilty, in fact. Given the fact that I tend to ramble, I&#8217;m not sure how to approach this one, aside from spending some time going through Jacob&#8217;s articles on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.useit.com\/papers\/webwriting\/\" title=\"useit.com: Writing for the Web\">writing for the web<\/a>, which I should do soon.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Javascript in links<\/strong>: Lightly guilty here \u2014 while I&#8217;ve excised most of the JS links on my site, the &#8216;Show Smileys&#8217; links in post comment forms still use it. I need to find a good way around that, I suppose (probably either displaying a small set of smileys and leaving the rest hidden, or just removing the smiley code entirely). Again, any suggestions? I&#8217;m leaning towards removing the code \u2014 they&#8217;ll still be available, but they&#8217;re used so infrequently, I might as well get rid of them in the comment form.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Infrequently asked questions in FAQ<\/strong>: Not having a FAQ, this one doesn&#8217;t really apply. I&#8217;ve never gotten enough questions to warrant a FAQ, actually.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Collecting e-mail addresses without a privacy policy<\/strong>: Well, again, this doesn&#8217;t really apply. While there&#8217;s a spot for e-mail addresses in my comment forms, they&#8217;re optional, and I don&#8217;t do anything with them. They just sit there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>URL&#8217;s greater than 75 characters<\/strong>: I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;m safe here. Some of my posts with <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/05\/why_i_dont_give.html\" title=\"Why I don't give my phone number to people who fry anymore\">obnoxiously long titles<\/a> probably break this one, but they&#8217;re relatively few and far between. I&#8217;ve also been trying to keep my post titles shorter since I moved to an archiving system that names the files by the post title, rather than using generic numbers for names (such as 000735.php, for instance).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mailto links in unexpected locations<\/strong>: I think I&#8217;m good here. Every page has a fairly clearly marked &#8220;Email me&#8221; link at the bottom, and that&#8217;s it. Not hidden, available at all times, and not overly intrusive.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Not too bad, all in all, I&#8217;d say.<\/p>\n<p>However, this does bring to mind a question. For those of you that visit my site from time to time \u2014 is there anything I&#8217;ve done here that bugs you? Or even if it doesn&#8217;t bug you, is there anything that you think might be worth my investigating? I&#8217;m starting to get into a mood to play with code and clean up some small areas that are bugging me, and I&#8217;m always open to suggestions. Feel free to let me know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Usability guru Jakob Nielsen posted his list of the year&#8217;s top ten web design mistakes, and while it&#8217;s aimed more at commercial sites, I thought I&#8217;d take a quick gander and see if there are any that I should worry about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}