Every one has a design to design and every design has a decision behind it. But some designs prove that the decisions behind them are rock-solid and some other designs proves that the decisions are nothing but just rocks. In this post, I’m summarizing few of those rocks (a.k.a bad design decision) which could easily make me to hate that website.
1. Logo does not link to the homepage:
A website’s logo/heading is what the users see at first when they land on the page. The landing page need not be the home page of the site. It could be any sub-page also. If the user, who landed on a sub-page, wants to go to the home page, he’ll obviously clicks on the site logo. If the logo does not link to home page, then the user needs to type the URL manually, which means your site just lose a point in user’s rating.
2. No search functionality:
so, you don’t want to compete with Google, huh!? Even though it is possible to search within any website using Google (try: google site:veerasundar.com), why troubling your users and outsourcing site search to Google (btw, Google guys got lot more to do!). Simply add a search box and your user’s wont get lost in your site.
3. Bloated content and no clear operation flow:
These web designs are something that has lot to give. The site will just throw up everything it has to you and you need to pick from that. There won’t be any clear flow of operation.
4. No information about the current progress status:
If you want to avoid bloating your user interface, then it is obvious to split up the web page into multiple sub-pages and let the user to navigate page by page. You can see this navigational pattern as Wizards in graphical operating systems. These wizards will become less usable if they don’t tell anything about progress status (like where the user is currently in, how many steps are still left to complete, etc) to the user. The user has to remember his action to keep up with the page flow and don’t give more work to user.
5. Sites that do not speak with me:
Will you ever talk to a person again if he denies to answer your question, gives you a wrong answer, or speaks by looking at some where else and not looking at you? A website’s usefulness relies on how well the site is interacting with the user – in a way it responds to user’s action , communicate what it does, notify any errors, etc. A website should talk with me properly, by giving me correct messages displayed at the correct location in the page. If it is not, the add this website to the (s)hit list!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
And your site has one thing I totally despise: a floaty “social bar” at the bottom. Rock meet glass window. Website heal thyself.
point noted.
I thought the ‘social bar’ from Wibia helped my readers to engage more with my blog. To avoid distracting the readability, I kept it at the bottom.
I don’t like it either; I kinda ignore it.
)
The first point reminds me of Arun’s website!
point considered.
on Arun’s website, that was my first feedback to him when he redesigned his blog.