Web design is not just about getting the colors right or the font in the right place – it goes way beyond that. However today we want to highlight the typical kinds of web design errors you can easily spot around the net.
If you look around, you’ll see that there are many different web browsers to choose from; people have multiple options but most of them prefer one out of three main browsers – Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. It is very easy to make a site that appears fine in one, or two, of them but not all. This all comes down to how your site is formatted and if that format works with them. Every web browser interprets CSS and other languages differently, which means in order to render your site correctly on each browser, you’ll have to take the right steps to ensure your website looks, feels and works the same in all browsers.
If you really want to be terribly old-fashioned, then go ahead and play music on your site. It is just something that people find annoying, and so you have to practice good usability concepts. If you really do want to play any type of audio file, whether it’s music or just a two minute intro speech from you, then let the user start it. The audio could be a guided tour or something that is helpful to the visitor, but still playing it automatically upon arrival is not a good idea. We have seen videos that play automatically, no controls to stop it and we immediately leave the site. If it could possibly cause an issue with your site readers, then it is best to err on the side of caution.
For some reason, there are some sites who seem to think that making their visitors and traffic register for something is necessary. If you elect to do this, then just accept that you will lose people who otherwise may have been sticky visitors. Of course hopefully you know that people will really not like being auto subscribed to anything. Hopefully you see that there really is nothing good to be gained from using such scripts. These practices are a bit shady, at best, and you just need to do things right at all times. Ideally it is very clear that search engine marketing is one thing that can have quite an impact on you and others, too. Proper grammar and good writing concerns are part of usability, too, so do not forget that.