{"id":694,"date":"2008-10-08T18:43:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T18:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/?p=694"},"modified":"2023-05-12T13:24:05","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T19:24:05","slug":"website-design-101-what-not-to-do","status":"publish","type":"ht_kb","link":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/?ht_kb=website-design-101-what-not-to-do","title":{"rendered":"Website Design 101: What not to do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my opinion, the most common mistake web designers make is this: Just because you <i>can<\/i> do something, doesn&#8217;t mean you <i>should<\/i>.  Don&#8217;t use technology simply for the sake of using technology.  Here are some things that I think should never be done in web design:<\/p>\n<p><b>Don&#8217;t make everyone register<\/b><br \/>\nMaybe you think your website is great, or maybe your marketing department thought it would be a great way to collect information&#8230;but whatever the reasons, never make your visitors register before they even enter your site.  Thankfully, there aren&#8217;t many that are guilty of this, but there are still a few.<\/p>\n<p><b>Don&#8217;t use splash pages<\/b><br \/>\nI know, you need to make money with your website, but do you really need to throw an ad in front of me before I even visit your site?  If the answer is &#8220;yes&#8221;, at least give me a way to skip said ad so I can do what I originally intended to do, albeit somewhat more annoyed.<\/p>\n<p><b>Never use music<\/b><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t want theme music when I&#8217;m browsing your website.  I&#8217;ve actually never met anyone who does.  It&#8217;s especially annoying at work.  If you must have sound on your site, make sure the visitor has full control of it.<\/p>\n<p><b>Add contact information<\/b><\/p>\n<p>If you have a website, and you are a legitimate company, then you must have contact information.  No, that doesn&#8217;t mean having a form for visitors to fill out.  It&#8217;s insulting to think that you want to review my question before speaking to me.  You should list a phone number and an email address, but at the very least, an email address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my opinion, the most common mistake web designers make is this: Just because you can do something, doesn&#8217;t mean you should. Don&#8217;t use technology simply for the sake of using technology. Here are some things that I think should never be done in web design: Don&#8217;t make everyone register&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"ht-kb-category":[],"ht-kb-tag":[],"class_list":["post-694","ht_kb","type-ht_kb","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/ht_kb"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb\/694\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ht_kb_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fht-kb-category&post=694"},{"taxonomy":"ht_kb_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrc-productivity.com\/techblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fht-kb-tag&post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}