1. Bad color contrast - hard to read. If you can't read it you'll never know whether its worth it, because who's trudge through it... It needs to be at least neutral if not captivating.
2. Made up words! You can not just stick 2 words together and decide it's a word - I'm talking to you techies. Nothing pulls me out of what I'm reading like goofy words.
3. Bad organization - whether its bad internal links, poor site mapping or ideas don't flow logically it's hard to frequent a poorly organized site. I'm not into 'data mining'.
4. Ads - They always them to be strangely unconnected to the website I'm visiting. Why would a comic book nerd care about getting classic car parts?! Distracting! Or of questionable moral standing...
5. Dead links on their links page. If you put on your page check it once in a while....
I don't think any of these are really new or original. Stylistically there's millions of options and sadly most are at best bad, with a large portion being awful.
Disclaimer - my website arcanalore.com (long since gone) was horribly put together by me to look like and old dusty tome. So I'm former bad web designer. Hang head low and leave in shame...
I have to concur with every one of your pet peeves. Nothing is more irritating than a dead link. For me it is always on pinterest. I will find the best craft idea, click on the site to learn how to make it and all it is is a picture-FAIL. I also detest ad after ad popping up left and right when I'm trying to look at a website. I don't mind made up words (of two words) so much- as long as I understand what they are trying to say and it is not too obnoxious ie a self photo-now a "selfie"- no, no, no.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand ads either. I use an ad-on for Firefox called Ad Blocker Plus. It blocks so many of the ads out there that I forget they are there sometimes. It's not until I'm on a different computer that I realize how bad they really are.
ReplyDeleteAs for the dead links, Lane is right. Pinterest is notorious for that. I think part of that comes from people who don't really know what they're doing or don't care to pin quality things. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the same dead link repinned over and over again.