There are 2 types of websites in the World Wide Web - The kinds which are easy and pleasant to use, and the other which makes you want to tear at your hair.

And with the ease of creating websites these days, there are thousands of self-proclaimed web developers cropping up like weed every other day. In fact I’ve had the pleasure to work with some of them myself. A few days of crash course and they believe that they are “ready”.

I guess that’s the way it is - Some people just feel the need to complicate things.

Copy-Paste

Probably one of the most useful inventions. But as with all inventions, people find a way to misuse it. There are so many websites with code snippets doing the most wonderful, beautiful things a web designer could imagine.

BUT

Copying code into your project without knowing what it does is probably the worst thing you could do. Not only there are chances that it could mess with the rest of your code, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT DOES TO DO WHAT THE WEBSITE SAYS IT WOULD.

Complex hurdles

When we learn new tricks, we like showing them off right? Like for example, you teach your dog to fetch and show off to your friends.

Its great to show off something new you learnt, but if it’s not useful to me, then I DON’T CARE.

You can put in whatever shiny buttons or flashy animations but if it does not help me get to the information I want or worse - stops me from getting the information, then I close your website. Plain and simple.

Pop ups

So I click on this interesting article. It takes me to the page and I start reading. All of a sudden - POP - PLS SIGN UP BLAH BLAH..

Clicks on back button

Interrupting a user while he is reading is not a great idea if you are looking for more visitors. And even worse, some websites lock their content so that unless you signup, you cannot read further. Of course people can bypass this by using Inspect Element feature of Chrome/Firefox, but still.

Inconsistency

Some applications may have a template with content appearing on on the center with control buttons on the top and links on the left and so on. Now instead of blindly following this style, you need to see if this can be applied to your website. You need to put components where they belong, when the users will naturally figure where what is supposed to be, based on the context of your application.

Its basically Recall vs Recognize. I picked up this concept in one of the sessions in Barcamp Bangalore spring 2014. If your UX is consistent, the users will instinctively figure out what to do next, rather than learning what to do.

Conclusion

What is the purpose of your website? What is the user supposed to do on your website? These are the questions you need to ask yourself before starting the design process. If you ignore it, your will suffer in terms of visitors, popularity, and of course your failed investment of time and money.

So sorry for the long rant but I just had to vent it out somewhere. Of course the web developers who do a crappy job are probably being directed by a customer who wants it that way. And if that’s the case - I feel for you man.