Over a decade ago one of the most prolific researchers into Human Computer Interaction, Jacob Nielsen, listed 10 top mistakes that were common to websites. After a wealth of research and documentation since then many of these top ten mistakes keep occurring. Here we examine Jacob's original list and comment on what is occurring in web design in 2009.
1. Using Frames
Splitting a page into frames is considered very confusing for users since frames break the fundamental user model of the web page. Suddenly you can not bookmark the current page and return to it because the bookmark will point to the containing frameset not actually the frames that have been loaded, URLs stop working, and printouts become difficult. To make matters even worse, the predictability of user interaction with the site disappears quickly. Today framed web pages still abound, although not to such a great an amount as before. One priority use of this type of document was social networking where an element of a page was refreshed on a frequent basis to identify if there were any new messages for users. Nowadays the same functionality can be implemented using Ajax technology without the need for frames.
2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology
There was a time that many so called professional web developers incorporated the latest gizmos into their site, usually because they thought it was cool and also because they could. However, landing on a site where you have to download extra plug-in and the like is one sure way of getting users to click their 'back button'. If anything, users are now more suspicious of downloading extra software to interact with a website because of the fear of virus 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 long mouse trail? OK it is fun, but for only about 0.02ms. If you want your website users to actually read the text on your web page, give them some peace and quiet and leave out the animation.
4. Complicated URLs
Appearing on the top in the address bar of every web browser is the URL of the current web page. Some people have stated that this should not be the case as the very presence of it causes users to try to infer the structure of the site from this single line of text. Until this address bar is ditched (it may happen!) The URLought to be human readable and reflect the page being views and the information space where the page is located.
Good web designers will pay attention to the design of URLS so that users could also make an educated guess for a document, or can easily remember the URL of the page they are on. How often today do web designers pay attention to the design of URLs?
5. Orphan Pages
This thankfully does not occur as often as before. Maybe it's the introduction of more template driven websites which ensures that every page has a navigation bar on it that is making the difference. However the days of arriving at a page which has no onward links seem to be passing.
6. Long Scrolling Pages
Back in the mid 90's only 10% of users scroll beyond the information that is visible on the screen when a page comes up which demanded that all critical content and navigation options should be on the top part of the page. However web site users are becoming more used to utilizing the scroll bar on the right hand side of the screen and the figure today is not as poor as then. However it is still best to place the important stuff at the top of the page which is available and visible immediately the page has completed rendering.
7. Lack of Navigation Support
Many web designers (not just limited to Brighton) get so familiar of how to find things on the website that they created they do not think about the user's ability to find things. This is a mindset that is very difficult to get over. The best place to start is to initiate the design with a good understanding of the structure of the information space and be conscious of communicating this structure explicitly to the user. Providing a site map and breadcrumbs will let users know where they are, where they have been and where they can go. Finally, get your grandmother to test the site to see if she can find things – it works!
8. Non-Standard Link Colors on a web site
We should all know the default colors of visited and unvisited hyperlinks, although many web designers hate them and change them to something unfamiliar. Remember: Unfamiliar Bad, Familiar Good. By default links to pages that have not been seen by the user are in blue; links to previously seen pages are colored purple or red. If you are a clever web designer then do not mess with these colors since the ability to understand what links have been followed is one of the few navigational aids that is standard in most web browsers. The keywords in this, as with other web design issues are consistency and familiarity. Do not go against convention (you would not drive on the opposite side of the road after all would you just to be different).
9. Outdated Information on a web site
Budget to hire a web gardener to constantly prune websites and check for broken links and issues that might arise during the life cycle of the web site. OK, it's a nasty job, especially on a large site but it is a necessary evil. However if you are removing pages, use a structured approach. In order to not damage any Search Engine Optimization you must make sure that search engines such as Google and Yahoo do not find any broken pages. So firstly, remove any links to the page you want removed, and then request that the page is removed from the Search Engines index, then ever, when the page is no longer indexed, physically remove it.
10. Overly long download times for web pages.
According to Neilson, traditional human factors guidelines indicate 10 seconds as the maximum response time before users lose interest. The problem you need to address is that there is no typical connection speed which web users connect to the Internet. Some people may still connect with dialup modem; others will have a superfast broadband connection. It is a real issue and the safest option would be to design for the slowest speed to ensure that as many users as possible have the content delivered to them in under 10 seconds as possible.
