5 things that will make me leave your website

I am by no means a web guru of any kind, nor do I claim to be an expert site designer/writer. I am, however, an avid user of the internet and frequent reader of many blogs. I surf a lot. I visit new sites every day. If I like them, I will bookmark them, or add them to my blogroll.

But then there are those sites that offend my sense of aesthetics and usability so badly that I have no choice but to leave the site. NOW. QUICK. BEFORE ZE GERMANS GET HERE.

Music/sound that plays automatically. Please, just don’t. I know you might LOVE Kelly Clarkson or Kanye West or who-/whatever, but at least give me the option to press play myself if I love them as well.
Flashing backgrounds. Do you surf your own website with all styles disabled? No? Then I can see no legitimate reason for you not to have noticed yourself how horrible the background is.
Netspeak. People have said it before, and people will without a doubt say it after me. Netspeak is an abomination. I will agree that it has its uses in text messages when using a cellphone, because of the limited space, but on the internet? No.
Huge headers/banners that take up all the space above the fold and then some. Restrain yourself!
Bad/missing navigation. Maybe it’s me getting old, but it isn’t always clear to me that I should click somewhere on the header graphic to navigate, at least not if the navigational elements are strange Japanese signs or similar.

I’ll go be a grumpy old lady elsewhere now. HMPH.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 22:34. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “5 things that will make me leave your website”

Tundraman Says:
May 17th, 2008 at 05:02

I’m in total agreement with you about website common sense. Having a personal website/blog does not excuse idiocy.

Zers Says:
May 17th, 2008 at 12:05

AMEN! Especially to the first three. Background music is absolutely horrible and screams of “10 year old who’s found a webiste generator older than she is”

Zers’s last blog post..“Men det e tiltak!”