Shake Gently - advertising technology blog

How easy we forget: top web development mistakes

Jim Rapoza, Chief Technology Analyst, eWEEK, recently put together a list of some common web development mistakes.

Below is a little background info on Jim via his author bio:
For nearly fifteen years, Jim Rapoza has evaluated products and technologies in almost every technology category for eWEEK. Mr Rapoza’s current technology focus is on all categories of emerging information technology though he continues to focus on core technology areas that include: content management systems, portal applications, Web publishing tools and security. Mr. Rapoza has coordinated several evaluations at enterprise organizations, including USA Today and The Prudential, to measure the capability of products and services under real-world conditions and against real-world criteria. Jim Rapoza’s award-winning weekly column, Tech Directions, delves into all areas of technologies and the challenges of managing and deploying technology today.

eWeek is a magazine I really enjoy. I’m sure Jim knew that his post would get some aggressive feedback from his tech audience since everyone has their own web development annoyances.

Of course, any time you make a list, you are bound to leave some things off or rank them differently than others. I think the list is a good starting point, and wasn’t meant to be an end-all be-all for common web development issues.

It is funny, though, as some mention, that the site doesn’t follow some of Jim’s own best practices.

One item I wanted to highlight was testing and evaluating the expectations of end users. Graphic heavy and animation websites can provide a great user experience if if that is what the target audience is expecting. For instance, I wouldn’t expect to be able to go and watch a movie trailer and behind the scenes clips on a movie website on a 28.8 modem. I think the importance of determining the audience, bandwidth and general tech savvyness becomes more relevant.

Andy had a post about defining what broadband is these days as our demand for bandwidth for items like VOIP and video conferencing continue to grow. So, items like browser and bandwidth standards need to be updated on a timely basis for a couple reasons: make sure that the new versions still work (such as IE 7) as well as raising the lowest common denominator. The reality is that the more cutting edge you make the website, the smaller the number of users that will most likely be able to enjoy the rich experience.

On sites like Amazon, which have mass market appeal, you are stuck supporting the lowest common denominator and only enabling the richer functionality for more advanced users. After all, that cool flash widget is only cool if it contributes to sales or provides a richer user experience and doesn’t get in the way of closing a sale. If it throws up a bunch of errors, you may have lost the sale completely.

I included a list of the points from Jim’s article below in a text friendly format.

1. Click, Click, Click - This is great, someone is at your site and they’re ready to make a purchase. Here they go; one click, two clicks, three clicks, just one more! And…. they’re gone. Maybe if they could get to where they wanted to go right away you would have made a sale.
2. Just Click on the Magic Compass - It’s great that new web technologies make it possible to add lots of cool new navigation and interaction techniques. But don’t put access to important features and content behind a strange graphic or icon. People know how links work on web pages. Some icons might as well be in elvish.
3. Don’t be too Graphic - The Following Web Content Contains Massive Image Files and Graphics That May not Be Suitable For Visitors With Anything But the Fastest Possible Internet Connections. Toning Down the Giant Graphics Files Is Advised For Site Developers.
4. Registry of Lost Web Sites - The legend of the Invisible Web Site. Unseen by search engines, web users or anyone who might actually use the services of the website. It uses the magic of enforced site registration to keep its valuable content hidden from all who might want to use it, especially those who want to give the owners of the site some business.
5. Sticking to the Script - Scripting languages are so useful. They make it possible to do lots of cool things in web design. Click this link for an example. Mmm, getting a script error. If only there was some other way to link to content, you know like an HTML link. Don’t use scripting where HTML will work just fine.
6. Too Rich - Animation is great, when it comes to Saturday morning cartoons. On the web too many animations, Flashy graphics, spinning graphs and windows popping in your face is sort of like a sign saying, “Stay away”.
7. Welcome To Our Site “image placeholder” - Here’s a great idea for the budding web site and application developer. There’s this technology that makes it possible to display information to visitors and users. It’s called Text! And unlike images and animations used where text would work just as well, text will always show up.
8. What’s Your Color Scheme? - Whoa, trippy man. I love the way the orange text looks on that purple background. Dude, that financial firm is just going to love this site design. Or probably not. Unless you’re designing for a jam band or some other client that likes wild colors, stick to color matchings that are pleasing to everyone.
9. Directionless Navigation - Wow, this site looks like it has lots of great content and products. But where is everything? Can’t find related content? Where’s that thing I saw the other day? I’m lost! Users of your web site shouldn’t need a trail guide. Make navigation clean, simple and easy to find.
10. Can We Table This For Now? - Aren’t tables great! They provide so much flexibility when laying out web content. And it looks so nice, at one specific resolution on one specific browser. At other resolutions, yuck! When using tables make good use of percentages and make sure the design looks good on all users screens.
11. Sloppy with Text - Wilcom too my grate neww web apliccatiun. Im a perfessinal web dervelper! The greatest coding skills won’t help if your web content is full of misspellings and poor grammar.
12. Click Here for Click Here - This is such a nice web application that you’ve built. It will really help our business deploy content to the web. And look it automatically creates links that say things like “Click Here”, “More” and “Continue Reading.” Now how do we change those to something more descriptive? We can’t? Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
13. Putting up a Velvet Rope - This is such as cool web site, can I come in? Oh, you only let in people from the IE click? Us Safari geeks aren’t welcome? And I was going to spend so much money. Don’t you know that browser-specific web sites and applications are like so five years ago?
14. This is a Web Site, Right? - Now this is what I call a content rich site. Look at the useful information here. Let me click here, wait, this is a PDF document, and this is a Word document. I thought this was a web site, you know, something I could view in a web browser.
15. Over-crowding - You know, when people say that something is like finding a needle in a haystack, they don’t mean that in a good way. On the web, too many links and other components can make it hard for a visitor to find the content that they want.

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