Over a decade ago, one of the maximum prolific researchers into Human-Computer Interaction, Jacob Nielsen, listed 10 top errors not unusual to websites. Despite a wealth of studies and documentation because then a lot of these pinnacle ten mistakes preserve happening. Here we examine Jacob’s original listing and touch upon what’s happening in net design in 2009.
1. Using Frames
Splitting a web page into frames is considered very confusing for customers seeing that frames damage the fundamental person version of the internet page. Suddenly you can’t bookmark the current page and go back to it because the bookmark will point to the containing frameset now, not the certainly frames that have been loaded, URLs stop working, and printouts become tough. To make topics even worse, the predictability of consumer interaction with the website disappears rapidly. Today framed web pages nonetheless abound, even though they no longer do this kind of first-rate quantity as before. One prior use of this sort of file changed into social networking in which a detail of a page turned into refreshed on a common basis to become aware of if there had been any new messages for users. Nowadays the equal capability can be applied to the usage of the Ajax era without the need for frames.
2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology
There turned into a time that many so-known as expert web builders included the trendy gizmos in their website, probably because the idea it becomes cool and also because they could. However, landing on a domain where you need to download more plug-in and the like is a positive way of getting customers to click their ‘back button.’ If something, users are actually greater suspicious of downloading extra software programs to interact with a website due to the worry of viruses or other exploits.
3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations
Do you really want to distract your users by animated banners, little spangly bits that float across the screen, or having an excessively lengthy mouse trail? OK, it’s for a laugh, but for the handiest, about 0.02ms. If you want your internet site users to genuinely read the text on your web page, supply them a little peace and pass over the animation.
4. Complicated URLs
Appearing on the top with the cope with a bar of every net browser is the URL of the modern web page. Some humans have said that this should not be the case as the very presence of it reasons users to try to infer the website’s structure from this single line of textual content. Until this deal with bar is ditched (it could manifest!), the URL should be human-readable and reflect the web page’s views and the facts space where the web page is located. Good web designers will note the layout of URLs so that customers could also make an educated bet for a document or can, without problems, recall the URL of the page they are on. How regularly nowadays do net designers be aware of the design of URLs?
5. Orphan Pages
This fortuitously does not arise as often as earlier. Maybe it’s the advent of extra template-driven websites that ensure that every page has a navigation bar that makes the distinction. However, the times of arriving at a page which has no onward hyperlinks seem to be passing.
6. Long Scrolling Pages
Back within the mid 90’s handiest 10% of users scroll past the facts. This is visible on the screen while a web page comes up, demanding that all crucial content and navigation options be on the top of the web page. However, web page users are becoming extra used to utilizing the scroll bar on the proper hand aspect of the display screen, and the determine nowadays isn’t as poor as then. However, it’s far nonetheless exceptional to vicinity the critical stuff at the top of the web page that’s to be had and seen without delay the web page has finished rendering.
Many web designers (not simply limited to Brighton) get so familiar with finding things on the website they created that they don’t think about the consumer’s potential to locate things. This is a mindset this is very tough to get over. The quality place to start is to provoke the layout with an awesome knowledge of the shape of the facts area and be conscious of communicating this structure explicitly to the person. Providing a domain map and breadcrumbs will allow users to understand wherein they may be, in which they had been, and wherein they can go. Finally, get your grandmother to test the website to see if she can locate matters – it really works!
8. Non-Standard Link Colours on a web website online
We have all to realize the default colorings of visited and unvisited hyperlinks, but many web designers hate them and change them to something unusual. Remember Unfamiliar Bad, Familiar Good. By default, hyperlinks to pages that have now not been visible by the user are blue; hyperlinks to previously seen pages are colored crimson or crimson. If you are a clever web designer, don’t mess with those colors since the potential to understand what hyperlinks had been followed is one of the few navigational aids that are fashionable in most net browsers. The key phrases on this, as with different web design issues, are consistency and familiarity. Don’t pass towards the conference (you would not power on the other aspect of the street, in the end, might you simply be exceptional).
9. Outdated Information on a website
Budget to rent a web gardener to continuously prune websites and check for damaged links and troubles that might stand up all through the lifestyles cycle of the web page. OK, it’s an unpleasant task, especially on a large web page, but it’s miles a vital evil. However, in case you are putting off pages, use a dependent method. To not harm any Search Engine Optimisation, you must ensure that search engines, including Google and Yahoo, discover any damaged pages. So firstly, put off any hyperlinks to the web page you want to be eliminated. Then, request that the page be eliminated from the Search Engines index. Subsequently, when the web page is not listed, bodily do away with it.
10. Overly long download instances for web pages.
According to Neilson, traditional human factors suggestions indicate 10 seconds because the maximum reaction time is earlier than users become bored. You need to address the problem that there is no ordinary connection speed that internet users connect to the Internet. Some humans may also nonetheless connect to the dial-up modem; others can have a superfast broadband connection. It is a real trouble, and the most secure choice could be to design for the slowest pace to ensure that as many customers as possible have the content delivered to them in under 10 seconds as feasible.
