Marketing Profs

I wonder if some people create and publish Web sites for the sole purpose of tormenting their visitors.

Browsing various Web sites and navigating the Web can often be like trying to read on an airplane while a five-year-old kicks the back of your seat and the infant next to you alternates between screaming, crying, and drooling on you.

To be sure, there are some excellent Web sites out there. But there are a lot of dreadful ones, too. The latter are a bane, especially to those who use the Web regularly.

The Internet continues to grow in popularity and importance for consumers and businesses alike. Therefore, the quality of sites needs to keep pace. Creating—and maintaining—high-quality Web sites is more important now than ever, because higher quality equals more revenue.

A bad Web site neglects to consider the site visitor's experience in some fundamental ways. The following is a list of the top 10 ways that a Web site can fail.

1. Animation

Seven-year-olds like watching animated cartoons on Saturday morning. Business people, professionals and most other adults don't. Sites that include showy Flash animations as an introduction, animated gifs on every page, or words that fly around are really annoying. They take away from the content and distract the visitors from achieving their goals.

Unless your site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time or other multimedia, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it. But don't force them.

2. Too Much Scrolling

Once I scroll down a full screen's worth, my eyes start to blur, I feel slightly lost, my head spins and my interest wanes. Computer monitors really aren't the best medium for reading.