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Common Web Site Development Mistakes
© 2008 Max Lent
The original list was originally
published in 1996 and widely copied and republished in print and
electronic media. This list was updated to match the current state
of Web publishing.
- Emphasize graphics over content. The World Wide Web is
driven by content. Graphics are important and essential, but without
content they are eye just eye candy. What Web users are looking for is
mind candy.
- Include lots of animation. Animation is cool stuff. Web
page developers love them. They are expensive to create and that means
more profit. But how essential are they? Take a look at JavaSoft's
Home page (http://java.sun.com/java.sun.com/).
When I last looked there were no animated Java applets there. Why,
they want to have their home page load quickly and point you to
product information. I don't recommend using animation unless it
directly relates to your products or services.
- Require that Web sites be viewed by a specific browser. A
little while ago Netscape owned the Web browser market. Now,
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the browser to beat. Which browser do
you think most Web users will use when Microsoft builds their Internet
Explorer into every copy of the Windows? Would you buy Netscape if you
already had an excellent Web browser built into Windows? I wouldn't.
Incidentally, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is available for free from
Microsoft at
http://www.microsoft.com. Web developers building Netscape
specific Web sites may soon be in for a shock.
- Develop Web sites that require the latest and greatest browser
to view them. Most Web users do not use the latest and greatest
Web browsers available. Instead, they use whatever browser was
supplied to them by their Internet access provider or came with their
computer. Many college and university systems still use Lynx, a
text-based browser. That means that Web pages created using
applications like Java and VRML are wasted on the vast majority of
users. Smart developers develop Web pages for the masses not the few
technical elite.
- Design Web sites around the expertise of the Web developer
rather than the client's products and services. To design a
corporate Web site the Web developer must understand the client's
business and the client's customers. The Web developer must know what
information the corporate client's customers want and expect. With
this information the Web developer can create an Internet bridge
between the corporate client and their customers.
- Develop a Web site and forget it. All too often corporate
clients don't understand that the Web is a dynamic and ever changing
environment. Web sites need to grow and evolve. The content must be
updated and expanded constantly. My advice to corporations who want to
create a one shot Web page or small Web site is to invest their money
in some other means advertising themselves. A poorly conceived, badly
maintained, small, content-poor Web site is worse than no Web site at
all. A content rich Web site that draws customers requires a long-term
commitment on the part of the corporate client.
- Develop a Web site and not list it with Internet search tools.
Developing a content-rich Web site that is continually updated and
expanded is only half the Web developer's job. The other half is
publicizing the client's Web site. That means getting the client's Web
site listed, in meaningful ways, with at least the top twenty or so
Internet search tools (Google, Yahoo,
and Altavista
to name a few). It means discretely announcing the client's Web site
in newsgroups and Internet mailing lists. It also means sending out
press releases to the media announcing the client's Web site and
additions to the Web site. Creating a Web site and keeping it a secret
is not good business.
- Spam the Net promoting the client's Web site or product.
Some promoters have already learned that sending out unwanted
promotional information to everyone on the Net can result in severe
and extreme backlash. They have had their network servers crashed from
being overloaded with returned junk mail and worse. They have also
lost sales and customer confidence. There are ways of sharing
information about a corporate Web site with millions of people without
angering them In fact, if it is done correctly, customers may even
thank you for the information. Knowing how to promote Web sites and
client products and services without using junk mail is the mark of a
professional Web developer and Internet advertising consultant.
- Don't provide customers with the information they need. The
most common mistake made by corporate Web developers is to omit
information customers look for. Every corporate Web site should
contain at least a name and address directory, a mission statement, a
detailed catalog of products and services, an evaluation form, a
sign-in form, a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page, and customer
service information. If a client wants to contact someone within a
corporation and can't find contact information on the corporation's
Web site, they may never visit that Web site again. The Web
developer's job is to anticipate what information Web users will want
from a site and provide it. Here's a helpful hint. If you don't know
what questions are frequently asked about your company, ask your
corporate receptionist secretary. You may be surprised how much they
know about this subject.
- Don't provide information about anything other than the
client's corporation. Providing content is the primary mission of
a Web site. Any opportunity to add content to a Web site is worth
exploring even if the content does not directly relate to the client's
product or services. For example, manufacturers of running shoes,
could add national and International schedules of running events. Why?
Because runners would use the client's Web site to find out where to
race or watch races. Content = traffic = sales. Other valuable forms
of content include a runner's guide to major World cities, stretching
exercises with graphics, hints on how to train, hints on how to buy
shoes and other running accessories, interviews with top runners,
interviews with physicians specializing in sports medicine, and
interviews with the engineers who develop running shoes. These
interviews could be presented as print, audio, and even video. The
list goes on and on and it should. What many corporations are
discovering is that free and easily developed content is rapidly being
captured by their competitors. The longer a corporation waits to add
content to their Web site the more expensive it becomes. Corporate Web
sites that lack large quantities of quality content will be doomed to
obscurity.
- Don't give away valuable information. When you watch TV or
listen to radio, you become part of an audience. The TV and radio
stations sell you, the audience, to sponsors. To attract an audience,
the TV and radio stations provide content that you will want to see or
hear. If the TV and radio stations can keep you tuned in, they make
money from the sponsors. It's a pretty simple concept. The same
concept applies to Web sites. If you are using your Web site to sell a
product or service, you must provide attract visitors. The best way to
attract visitors is to offer something for free-just like the TV and
radio stations. Now that there tens of millions of Web sites, you have
to give away something pretty valuable just to get visitors. That
something could be free product samples, contests, information, data
and more. I personally believe most people using the Web are looking
for information or data. The Web is becoming a huge encyclopedia of
information. Every corporation currently has the opportunity to offer
information about their area of the universe. This won't last long.
- Don't design a Web site as a means of dynamically disseminating
public relations information. A press release published on the Web
is immediately available to not only the media, but to clients.
Corporations that use the Web, Internet, e-mail, and other electronic
means of disseminating information are way ahead of those corporations
who are still using just the U.S. Postal Service to promote their
corporations. The job of a professional Web developer is to work with
their clients to use the Web and the Net as dynamic publicity tools. A
press release should be on the corporate client's Web site within an
hour of its being released, not days later.
- Don't provide a way for Web site visitors to contact you.
If you really want to upset visitors to your Web site, don't give them
a way to contact you or purchase your products and services. A friend
of mine recently hired a Web site development company to create a Web
site for their business (Why they didn't contact me is still a
mystery.). If you were to visit my friend's Web site, you could go
through nearly every Web page without finding a means to contact my
friend or their business. After spending a small fortune on Web site
development, listing their site with some Web search engines, my
friend's site has produced just a few sales leads. None of the other
potential customers could figure out how to contact their business. If
you look at the bottom of this page, and every Web page I have ever
created, you will find a full street and e-mail address listing or a
link to an address page. Every attempt should be made to enable
potential customers to open a channel of communication.
- Use wild background colors that obscure
text and colored text on top. One of
the Web site gimmicks that I like least is garish background colors
with contrasting colored text on top of it.
This technique works for pages with a simple
large headline, sometimes. Most of the
time it doesn't work. I am in the process of removing background
textures and colors from nearly all of the pages I have created.
There must be a reason why most of us don't buy
newspapers or books with green pages and red
characters. Black characters on a white
background are easiest to read and that's what I recommend.
- Create large headlines where they aren't needed.
Need I say more?
- Create links to pages that don't exist. Nothing bothers me
more than visiting a Web site that has links to non-existent Web pages
within the same Web site. Web sites are usually created off-line,
tested, and only then uploaded for publication. It's fine with me to
see a page with an under construction label on it, but non-existent
pages are intolerable.
- Include high resolution color images on every page. Most
graphics are read at 256 colors at fairly low resolution. There is no
need to have 100K graphics on Web pages. If I go to a Web site that
has lots of high resolution graphics that take forever to download, I
turn off the graphics completely or never come back to the Web site.
Web graphics should be no larger than 40-50K. And no more than one of
these graphics should be used per Web page. Additionally, if server
space is limited, it is better to use the limited space for text.
- Use high contrast and detailed backgrounds. High contrast
detailed backgrounds make reading text difficult at best. Most of the
backgrounds available on the Web have too much color, too much detail,
or too much contrast. Even commercial products I've purchased use
backgrounds with too much of everything. I usually have to severely
modify backgrounds using Adobe Photoshop to make them sheer ghosts of
their former selves. Even then I use the sparingly.
- Put lots of links in your corporate Web site. Early
adopters of Web page design included lots of links to other Web sites.
They did this as a means of making their Web sites useful. Lists of
links to other Web sites is not content. They may be amusing or even
interesting, but they are not content. As soon as someone uses one of
those links, they are out of your Web site. That means that you can no
longer sell them anything. If you had a store in a shopping mall,
would you use your floor or wall space telling visitors that there are
lots of other, possibly more cool, places that they should visit in
the mall? I don't think so. As a business person, you would want your
potential customers to stay in your store as long as possible. The
longer they are there, the more likely they will buy something. The
whole point of supplying content is to keep visitors within your Web
site for as long as possible. If net surfers want to look for
interesting sites, they can get that information from lots of other
places. What you want is other Web sites and search engines generating
links to your site. Content attracts visitors-have I mentioned this
before
- Don't include detailed product information on corporate Web
sites. I recently visited a Web site that sold computer equipment.
The site was hosting a shareware software resource and their
advertisement looked inviting so I paid them a visit. I saw a product
I was interested in and visited that page. All I found there was a
price. There was no product information. There was no picture of the
product. The brand of the product was even omitted. Without that
information, I was unwilling to purchase the product. They lost a
sale. They should have invested in print advertising, but I doubt if
they would have done any better there. Their print ads would probably
include the phrase "call for price." The point is that, text space on
the Web is cheap. If you have tens of pages of product information,
reviews, articles, customer feedback, comments, instruction manuals,
and more, all of it should be online. This is content and more is
better.
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