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Web Design Mistakes and Web Site Usability Guidelines
by Tad Coffin
MediaTitan.com

Some wise human once said "Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't nearly enough time to make them all yourself." Hence this article. Here are five of the most annoying and common web design mistakes.

1. Slow download time - Don't be a site that is filled with the most amazing animation, music and web gizmos in the world, but that nobody goes to because it takes too long to download. A nice clean site that downloads quickly will get you much further than a site with all the fixings that takes forever to download.

2. Unreadable text - If a user has to struggle to read the text on your web site, chances are they won't. Here are some common readability issues:

Low contrast text and background - Don't use light colored text on a light background. Also, don't use dark text on a dark background. Text is most easily read with extreme contrasts between the background and text. Black on white is about as good as it gets for readability. Red on black is pretty bad. Yellow on white isn't so hot either.
Text on a busy background - Text is most easily read on solid color background. Putting text on textured backgrounds can make it much harder to read.
Small Text - Text that is really tiny may look interesting, but is hard to read. If you must use small text, make sure changing the text size in a browser will change the size of your text. Using style sheets can some times over-ride a browser's ability to increase text size.

3. Unpleasant designs - Designs that use too many colors, colors that clash, or a messy layout, are just plain hard to look at. A site should be pleasant to look at, not a chore.

4. Long pages - Long pages are a problem. It is not so much because people don't want to scroll down, as they simply don't want to have to sift through piles of information to get what they want. You must catch their attention right away at the top of the page, not down on the 80th line of the text. Pages that focus on just a few topics with links to other related topics on other pages make finding information on a page much easier.

5. Poor Navigation - Getting to the rest of the site from any page is extremely important. Users may come to any page of your site from a search engine. You do not want your visitors at a dead end page without any links to the rest of your site. If this happens, they will leave.

If you would like help designing or redesigning your web site, drop us a line:
webmaster@mediatitan.com
619-223-8530