The web is a wonderful place where you can say pretty much anything. But with that sense of freedom to say and do anything we want, we often make mistakes. These mistakes often affect our visitors in a negative way. The following are seven things that we often say on the web that we really shouldn't.

 

 

 

People are simply not interested in what you may offer later on. The web is one of the most nomadic environments that exists. People are really only interested in what they can do on your site right now.

 

The idea behind a coming soon message is to use it to arouse excitement as a coming soon sign in a mall generates interest in a store even before it opens. But web pages are all equal distances apart; a single click. So it's simple for web users to go find what's coming soon somewhere else.

 

 

 

Do you like travelling on roads that are under construction? Neither do web surfers. Under construction messages and their associated tacky graphics send a message to your visitors that you haven't taken the time to finish what you started.

 

 

 

When you create a web page that best viewed with a particular technology, keep it to yourself and pray that no one notices. No one is going to change their resolution or browser because your site will look better using that configuration.

 

There's nothing wrong if your website looks a little bit better at a particular resolution, so long as it looks good and remains functional at other resolutions. However announcing that your site looks best with some configuration distracts users and serves no real benefit as we've already mentioned exactly how many users will comply with your suggested configuration.

 

 

 

This one follows the same thread as the previous point. When you require flash for functional elements of your website, you are cutting off a segment of your audience altogether. Secondly flash elements tend to encourage people to become unnecessarily creative with basic navigation. This means that the average user will have a difficult time navigating your site because the navigation scheme will be unfamiliar to them.

 

This being said, Flash has its place on the web. It is an excellent medium to deliver low bandwidth multimedia creations. However, it should be used as a specialized tool and not a substitute for HTML.

 

 

 

This text is often used to display a link. The problem with this is that people have to read a lot of extra information to put the link into context.

 

Take the following example: To see a web cam in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Click Here.

 

And compare it to: You can visit the following link to see a web cam in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 

You need to read the entire sentence in the first example, but in the second, you don't need to remember the specific context of the sentence to understand where the link will take you.

 

 

 

This is forcing extra choices upon the user. If there's something people hate to do, it's making choices when they don't have to. These types of choices usually reside on a splash page which does nothing to help the user except present them with yet another choice before they can get to that which they seek.

 

Have a look at your statistics. I think you'll find that many people never make it past your first page. This is relatively normal, but you will lose more if the first page to your site offers no initial value as most every splash page does.

 

 

 

If you've properly written your page, you shouldn't need a text only version. A properly coded page will be viewed equally across all browsers, including text browsers. This feature is important for fundamental accessibility and also to make certain that search engine robots will be able to crawl your website.

 

Keeping basic usability in mind when you design pages is extremely important as it expands your potential audience and it decreases that number of people that will come to your site and have an unpleasant experience.