It is very easy to get caught up in a sort of feature frenzy, where the desire to create a compelling website leads to focusing too much on implementing new features and functionality, and too little on considering whether those features will actually appeal to the people visiting the site. Good web design does not depend on features nearly as much as it depends on the ability to empathize with an audience. By understanding the motivation of your users, and becoming savvy to some common misconceptions about what works on the web, you can end up investing in your web project more wisely, and also creating a more appealing website.
Here are some unfortunately common examples of website elements that do more for the site owners than they do for the users.
Complicated interactive flash components that nobody understands
Otherwise known as the Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” guitar solo. This guitar solo will blow your mind the first time you see it. But by the second time around it's plainly obvious what an unnecessary waste of your time it is. Flash is a powerful asset when used appropriately. When it serves only to dramatically (read: slowly) reveal information to your visitors, it becomes an annoying hindrance, doing nothing more than forming a barrier between them and the content they’ve come to your site in search of.
Solution: Use flash in situations where you can justify the benefit it brings to the user. Use it to create interactive functionality that enhances the site visitor’s experience and their understanding of the content. Or use it to create an immersive storytelling experience.
Van Halen and Flash are both awesome in moderation.
Rounded corners, drop shadows, and gradients.
These visual trends are essential to the Web 2.0 look, and are often added at a client’s request to “legitimize” a site design. But when was the last time that you bought something online, or registered for a site simply because the corners of the web page were beveled? I am a firm believer that the aesthetics of a website do play a crucial role in its ability to convince users to follow through with an action. However, succumbing to current trends will not make your site stand out from the crowd. If anything, using visual cliches will only serve to make your site blend in among the competition, and will likely make it appear dated in the near future.
Solution: Be wary of trying to imitate the look of popular websites (and yes, I do mean Apple's website). Focus your attention on elements of the design that have a more profound impact on influencing your users, such as good typography, photography and web copy. Make your site stand out by looking to other sources of inspiration such as art and product design. Push the concepts that make your site or product individual.
Check out Mike Kus' fantastic and
inspirational presentation on instilling concept, meaning and art into your website design, as opposed to adhering to meaningless trends.
Rounded corners and drop shadows... with IE6 support
See above. But this time expect to pay more for it and to bloat your code with unnecessary mark-up. Just because everyone in your office has IE6 and a fetish for drop shadows, doesn’t mean that the majority of your users do.
Solution: Don’t force your design to render the same in every browser. Build sites that degrade gracefully in older browsers, and let the modern browsers reap the benefits of the CSS that they inherently support. The money you'll save will be better spent working to improve overall usability and content. Or you could buy a pool table.
Auto-play
You may love your intro music, and the video that your team has toiled endlessly to put together, but that doesn’t mean that your site visitors want it imposed upon them. Remember that they could be sitting at their desk, surfing the web at work. Or they may find it annoying the third or fourth time they hit your site.
Solution: Allow your site visitors to control their own experience, and choose whether or not to view audio and video content. Provide backup content that will display if the user is accessing the site from a phone or device that doesn’t support your multimedia content. You’ll probably save on bandwidth costs too.
Your life story
Unless a site visitor has blindly stumbled upon your website, that person has come to your site for a reason. As a site owner or web author, you should be anticipating different scenarios that may have led them there. When you create content, keep those scenarios in mind. The visitor may not spend very long on your site, before clicking over to a competitor’s site. People don’t want to read marketing fluff, and they don’t want to know your life story.
Solution: Stay focused on your users and delivering information that will genuinely be of interest to them. If you have an “About Us” page, or web copy that talks about the history of your organization, keep it brief. Highlight the important details and how they directly benefit the visitor.
There's a great article from
A List Apart about creating an effective "About Us" page.
Interaction before Content
Nothing makes website owners drool like slick JQuery interaction. Sliding panels, rotating content, tab switchers, accordion panels, modal pop up windows, and anything else you can click, drag or slide around...all of this can add a really juicy and tactile interactive layer to your site. Sometimes its these details that can really set your site apart from others. The problem occurs when the functionality is determined before the content is planned. Too often site owners and designers focus on the functional mechanism for displaying the content before considering the actual information that needs to be presented. This results in awkward interactive experiences that leave the user feeling confused rather than impressed.
Solution: Content MUST come first, followed by Accessibility and Usability. Interactive layers should be added afterward, as a way to enhance the understanding of the content. Don't add an accordion panel if there is no reason to hide information. Don't add a tab-switcher if you're not exactly sure what's going to go in each tab. Use modal windows when you want to present contextual information or actions, not when you want to present massive amounts of complex content.
One of the hardest things about designing a website is balancing its ability to be both a showcase and a product. Never underestimate the importance of thinking of a website as a product...a product that people have an option to use. Sometimes striking this balance means embracing new ideas, which is usually the easy part. The real challenge comes in being able to recognize when an idea doesn't work (as cool as it may be), and letting it go.