12 replies to this topic

[Donna]

Have you ever thought about the fact that even though you think your website might be cute, entertaining, or funny, it may be extremely annoying to the people who are visiting it. When you are a webmaster or web designer, it is very important that you familiarize yourself with the things that visitors find irritating, unless it is your goal to have them leave, and then never visit your site again.

It is strange how easy it is to develop an annoying website. This could be because when you are designing a website, you are concentrating so intently on the smaller details that you forget to step back and look at the big picture. What may have started as a flash heading with a few moving parts can soon become a site filled with flashing graphics, sounds, bright colors, and other elements that are enough to be overwhelming and simply…well, annoying!

The important thing is to remember that there is a major difference between catching someone’s attention and blinding them. You must keep in mind that your website design is supposed to send your visitor a message about you and your topic, and not about how adept your programmer is at developing animated graphics.

It is actually much easier to be annoying than it is not to, so it is best to test your own site to make sure that you are not in that dreaded annoying category. The following are the top five ways to know that your site is annoying. While these are not the only ways, they are the major ones that will usually send a visitor away, and cause them never to return, no matter how great your content, or what a great deal you have to offer.

- Background music – unless you have an online radio site, or you’re selling music CD’s or files, having sound in your background can be very irritating. For one thing, you don’t know on what volume level the user’s speakers may be. For another thing, your user may not be visiting the site in the comfort of his or her own home; what if this person is at work? And lastly…it’s annoying!

- Enormous font sizes - if your target market is people with vision disabilities, then by all means, use a large font size, as it will serve your purpose well. However, if you are simply building a standard website, a font size that is far to large simply looks as though you are shouting. No visitor wants to be shouted at.

- Tiny font size – if your font size is too small, it is as though you’re sitting in the crowd at a hockey game, whispering to the person next to you. Your message simply cannot be heard.

- Overlapping layers – when designing your website, layers can be quite useful. However, when you are slamming advertising or unsolicited messages in your user’s face, blocking what they really want to read, it is very irritating. Don’t try to force anything in front of your visitor. Persuasion works much more pleasantly.

- Pop-ups – Many browsers and add-on tools now block pop-ups, but still some web designers insist on using them. This is annoying not only when we don’t have anti-pop-up tools, because new browsers keep opening, but also when we do have the tools because we miss messages. When you have a message, keep it all in the same browser window.

Though everybody does have their own list of things that they just can’t stand from websites they visit on the internet, this covers the most annoying ones that are agreed upon by the largest number of people. However, don’t limit your annoying-proofing efforts to only these five things. Have a look at your website from a very picky perspective, and take away everything else that is even slightly irritating. After all, if your visitor is put off by your website in any way, the odds are that he or she will leave without a second thought.

It is not a matter of good taste and bad taste. In reality, it is simply about being polite to your visitors, and making sure that they are as comfortable as possible while they are navigating your site.

About the Author:
Mark Nenadic
Mark is the director and face behind 15Degrees-North
http://www.15dn.com where you will find articles and
resources to help with Search Engine Optimisation, Internet
Marketing and Web Design.

[God]

Pretty helpful stuff there. Funny thing, http://www.15dn.com being an example of an annoying site IMO.

Yeah, Background music would have to be a common problem for sites. I reckon tiny fonts size could be solved though, just by going to "view > text size". Then again, I doubt someone would hate to keep doing that to every site that may have different font sizes.

In my opinion, a minimum for fonts sizes would be 12 to 16 px. Spacing out line breaks helps too, so sentences don't seem so cluttered.

One thing I hate though, are the people that use dark (fonts) colours on a wide white space, just because it can really mess up your eyes.

- Dark on Light (not blending in your colours can be pretty distracting)
- Colour Clashing
- Blurry saved fonts as images (for html menus and flash menus etc)


Anywho, just saying. Good article again.

[Matheus]

pop ups of flash websites are the worst things in the world of webdesign, no matter how beautiful your flash website is... pop ups WILL RUIN it.

some other annoying things that can be included on the list is

• Image Ready slices, so we will wait like 3 minutes to load all your god damn images
  
• using images as text... people doesn't know how to make text with anti-alias, so they keep using images as text.
  
• loading on everything you click
  
• web2.0 cliches
  
• did I say pop ups?

[Trix06]

Great find Donna, you find some nice articles for us. Thanks!

[ChrisGilmore]

Great article, very usefull.

[Axeraider67]

I don't even know why pop-ups are a good method of advertising- they're just plain annoying and almost everybody clicks out of them the moment they see one, and more and more you see new software developing to block them.

It's almost as if they're just TRYING to annoy us.

Good guide!

[bhanu]

this is an article worth reading. awesome article! noob question- what's a flashing header? and pop-ups are really annoying. besides, background music makes no sense. no one should even think of putting it on their site(s).

[Ben]

Axeraider67, on Oct 28 2006, 01:22 PM, said:

I don't even know why pop-ups are a good method of advertising- they're just plain annoying and almost everybody clicks out of them the moment they see one, and more and more you see new software developing to block them.

It's almost as if they're just TRYING to annoy us.

Good guide!

They purposely annoy you so their name gets stuck in your head, even if its a bad thing. They want you to spread word no matter if its bad or good. IMO I dont really see the benifits..

Edited by d4rkst0n3, 31 October 2006 - 03:37 AM.

[Lee™]

Thanks for your time on the article. The most annoying thing about a website, i think, is having music player on which cant be stopped.

Damn annoying!

Edited by Lee™, 07 November 2006 - 06:19 PM.

[EAXT]

Thanks for the find! Pretty interesting!

[Raven-X]

Indeed, pop-ups are quite annoying and I never like them. Another thing I hate is red on blue or red on yellow color combinations...

[frncis]

a great article.. very usefull also for me... ill apply this into my website.. thank you for sharing...:-)

[α∂αмяoss]

Hmmm, let me see.

Background Music - Never. Even if you are a radio site provide a little radio script so that members dont have to listen to a song they dont like. If i ehre music load up on a site i leave it straight away (With the exception of Xmas songs).

Enormous font sizes - Ocassionaly. Sometimes it's okay to use it in a news report or something just to make members look at it. I ocassionaly use it for words like 'not' to try and make sure members read the not and don't do whatever i have told them not to.

Tiny font sizes - Never. Not only is it painful to sit up extremely close to the screen just to read the news it also makes your web page look extremely odd.

Overlapping layers - Never. I agree with it being 'extremely annoying' when you are trying to read something.

Pop-Ups - Well, i understand why a webmaster would put them in because he needs the money to run the site. But now i think it's a better idea to do text ads like google adsense and stuff.