There has been so much talk about SEO and optimizing web pages wisely. The number of grave sins tested with websites have not decreased a bit. I believe in a fair application of common sense (ironically, least commonly used). You do not have to break your bank to get the basics of optimizing your web pages right. Or for that matter, configure the website the right way for usability (which has become such a buzz word recently). Basic idea is to give your visitors and prospective customers some easy few minutes when they are on your web page. Okay, I list what I think are some unforgivable blunders in overall web design:
o UNTITLED DOCUMENT: Search for this phrase on Google and more than 4 million web pages would come up. No, there are not so many untitled or web pages lying about, they actually are the doings of sinister web designers, who forgot to use the MOST important HTML tag, the Title tag.The Title tag actually gives a title to your webpage and is the identity of your website in the search world By default, if you do not put anything in that tag, browsers assign it a cool 'untitled document' status. How bad is this, I leave it up to you guys? I have also witnessed some equally cruel 'Home Page' as the title. And if I tell you two of the guilty organizations on that list are, University of Dundee and Middlesex, you would realize the gravity of the situation.
o FONT, FONT, FONT: How many times have you wished that all the websites were designed for one standard browser and you do not have to see a split frame or hotch potch fonts? Well, one standard browser is probably a distant dream but we can certainly sort the most basic element on a web page: which is Font. I know there is a 'Ctrl and + -' keyboard combination to increase / decrease the font size but I would not take that risk with my customers who would want to exit as soon as they have seen that stupid weird illegible font telling them to buy the product. I am not even pointing to those gothic and other fonts which are far from standard. Is it not the easiest thing to do on a web page? To fix the font.
o FANCY LANDING PAGES: Well, well, I have been guilty of some flash intros in past. They do two big sins: Drive your customers away and Drive them further away. Okay I accept the times have changed and a broadband is better than a dial-up and Flash loads up faster, but it still needs to be used sparingly and very relevantly. Can you imagine eBay using Flash intros? Why? Research suggests between 3 and 8 seconds to any webmaster to showcase their website. By website I mean, content, product and services, not the design artist. I am up for it as long as its part of a well thought out presentation scheme. Another sin: I have seen guys making their designer intro pages as their home page (index.html). Problem: they can not and usually they do not optimize these fancy pages for search engines, solely because they do not have enough content there, just the fancy graphics and animations. Even larger issue is that these pages take some valuable chunk out of that 3-8 second window of opportunity.
This list is now complete. I request you guys to come up with instances where some really simple and silly mistakes may be costing the website owners big time.