My Analyses on the Article Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

The article Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design written by Jakob Nielsen, poses several interesting mistakes made by Web Designers today.  The article includes valuable factors and reasons why each mistake would reduce the potentiality of a website. Below are the list of Web Design mistakes according to Nielsen and a brief summary of each:

1. The first mistake web designers make according to Nielsen is Bad Search. A search box cannot be too literal as it should handle typos. If a search box is too literal, this can be quite frustrating for the elderly but all users as well. Also the order in which the information is populated should always have relevant information first then followed with popular information. A simple search box is best.
2. The second mistake is a website having all their content on PDF files while browsing. PDF layouts are optimized by paper and not the browser therefore it is harder to navigate through a PDF file. PDF files should only be used for printing content and not for displaying purposes. All other content should be on the website.
3. Navigating through a website is journey for the visitor; therefore by changing the link colors when a link has already been selected, it will prevent them from going back to the same page and causing confusion.
4. Non-scannable text is not recommended; a website not utilizing sub heads, bullets, short paragraphs, or highlighting words can be intimidating.
5. Web Designers should allow user to resize their text as needed. In CSS, one should specify font sizes in relative terms not through number of pixels.
6. Because search engines are micro content, a website must have their company name in the HTML tags. The titles must also contain specific word in reference to the page.
7. Users will ignore anything that looks like an advertisement therefore Web Designers must not utilize banner blindness, animation avoidance, and pop-ups.
8. Webpages must be consistent; when a website is consistent and meets visitor’s expectations they give the customer a feeling of control while on the website. If it is not consistent, visitors will feel insecure and lost.
9. Web Designers should not default the new page to open in a new browser as this causes: polluting a visitors screen, the feeling of taking over the visitors machine, and disables the back button. Visitors have the ability to open a new page in a new window.
10. The ultimate failure is the inability to provide the visitor with the answers they’re seeking. One example of this is not listing the price of products or services.

 

Upon reviewing these 10 mistakes, I made a search for a website that could potentially fall under this category. While I pondered on how long it would take to find an actual bad website, I was astonished to find that by simply googling the words “bad website design”, three sources down I found the title World’s Worst Website and selected it. The website contained several pop ups, difficult navigation, hyperlinks that didn’t work, no available information, and many boxes of content that looked like advertisements that I overlooked. The link is listed below.

http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

Reference

Nielsen, Jakob. (2011). Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design. “Nielsen Norman Group.” : UX Training, Consulting, & Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://www.nngroup.com/>.