This is in no way intended to be a definitive be-all-to-end-all list, but hopefully some may find it helpful. I’ve certainly made some of these mistakes in the past, we’re always learning and the best instance of learning is when you learn something you may be doing wrong, admit it and come out more knowledgeable from the lesson or experience.
I would love to hear other ideas of what should go on the list or if you disagree with anything on the list, remain respectful and polite and you’re bound to be heard.
I’ll be sure to add more as I go along, but here’s the list I’ve created so far, enjoy:
A
Analytics not being utilized:
In my humble opinion I think every website should use Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s powerful and it’s useful. I think it’s important to have Analytics installed in the footer of every single one of your pages of every single website you own. You can analyze a mountain of info about the traffic to your website; where they came from, how long they spent on your site, what keywords they used to get there etc. etc.
I’m probably selling Analytics short of it’s usefulness, but it’s an important tool to analyze your SEO efforts and if you’re paying for 3rd Party ads it’s important to make sure you’re actually getting what you’re paying for by seeing how many hits you’re getting from that source.
B
Blue borders on linked images:
Hideous blue image borders are nearly a thing of the past. But, in case you missed the memo, I think it should pretty much be mandatory to have this small snippet of code in all CSS stylesheets;
a img{border:0px}
C
Counters seen publicly:
It’s frightfully ugly, unprofessional and out-dated to display visitor counters ANYWHERE on your website.
D
Donations misuse:
PayPal donation buttons, we’ve all seen them. I find it appropriate for organizations and charities, or people that provide open source scripts and so on to accept donations. But, if you don’t actually do anything to benefit anyone and are just looking to score a few free bucks by putting a “donations” feature on your site, this is incredibly tacky and you will lose credibility.
E
Excess fluff:
I enjoy reading something substantial, when I read an “About” page of a company and they go on and on about how they are THE Best and the definitive leader of some industry (regardless of whether it’s true or not) I instantly think the opposite and how unappealing statements like that are. Today’s average internet user is much savvier and is turned off by fluff, where they might be more engaged by honesty, especially if a company acknowledges it’s cons, it’s a sign that they care and want to give it to their customers straight.
F
Flash being used for an ENTIRE website:
I don’t hate Flash. I do however, hate the idea of Flash being used for an ENTIRE website. Flash has it’s perks and purposes, for embedded music, video and other features on a website. But, the bottom line is that probably 90% of all-Flash websites are neither user-friendly or seo-friendly.
It is possible for Flash to be seo-friendly and crawlable, but this is hardly practiced. Here are the downsides to the typical all-Flash website;
- It’s dependent upon the user having an up-to-date working version of Flash player with their browser, if they don’t they’re gone
- Depending on how “heavy” your Flash is it can take too much time to load, if the user doesn’t have a fast enough connection, they’re gone
- Typical unoptimized Flash isn’t crawlable by search engines, therefore you’re missing out on content and keywords being indexed into Google for your website
- Say someone wants to copy an excerpt from your site or copy down an address or phone number for further use like searching for maps or directions, the text isn’t capable or active in that sense and they’ll need to manually jot info down, this is annoying for the lazy or on-the-go user
- There are not actual separate pages, but virtual ones, so if you’re 4 “pages” deep into this Flash website and want to bookmark the page, you’ll find that since most Flash is self contained it never actually left http://www.website.com/ to a sub-page, therefore if you go back at a later time, you’ll likely need to reload the Flash, watch an intro and then re-navigate to your destination, that is if you remember exactly how, also the same symptoms apply if you press “Back” in your browser, it’ll just reload to the beginning again
And the list goes on. Before anyone mentions it, it is possible to prepare your Flash pretty well for all those scenarios, however the average Flash designer does not even think about going through all that trouble.
G
Google Webmaster Guidelines not followed:
SEO isn’t such the mystery people make it out to be, Google wants you to do well. They want you to have a healthy prosperous website, better for the web and better for Google. Keep it white-hat and organic, put a little effort in and follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines; they are there for a reason.
H
Home links to index.html:
Whether it’s index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.asp or whatever it’s bad practice to ever link to your homepage in that fashion. It’s always best to link to; http://www.website.com/.
I
Images not being utilized for traffic:
Images usually go neglected for anything but their visual purpose for the aesthetics of the website. But, if named correctly, given a good and relevant alt and title tag it can serve as a good source of traffic through search engine image searches. Here’s a good example for how you could utilize an image of someone swimming in an ocean;
…and the larger the image the better.
J
Joining in competitor rivalry publicly on your site:
It can happen to anyone, sometimes a fellow professional in your field or a competing business or even a client can get you riled up or have some sort of an issue, it’s life and it happens. But, you should never publicly slander anyone or their business online and tell people to steer clear of them. I don’t care how wrong they are for whatever reason, just don’t do it. First, it’s likely illegal, second it doesn’t help your professionalism or credibility to try and bash others.
If you have a personal blog and really want to get it off your chest, you might do so in an anonymous way, no names and no specific indicators of the business, it can never help you and you certainly do not want to provoke retaliation. If you’ve truly been wronged ethically or legally, there are the proper channels to handle such problems, but it should definitely be handled privately.
K
Killing the competition too aggressively:
This goes hand and hand with fluff and competitor rivalry. In your marketing language sometimes it’s okay to say “the other guys” or “no one else”, but specifically targeting a competitor by name to more or less say how incompetent they are and in effect how great your company is may not be attractive to some potential customers.
A company with integrity that uses honest and friendly tactics might be more appealing than one that draws it’s strength by showing how poor others are at something is more appealing, at least to me. I like the “proof is in the pudding” approach, here is our product or features and let them speak for themselves without the need of politic-like shady tactics.
L
Losing PageRank from the www vs non-www battle:
This might be THE number one neglected aspect of a website more so than anything. http://www.website.com/ and http://website.com/ are technically 2 separate pages and depending on how people link to you it can split your PageRank. Although I think that Google has gotten a pretty good handle on this, I think it’s still important to pick whether you want www or non-www and stick with it and be consistent. For Linux servers, I recommend using the .htaccess approach:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.website.com/$1 [L,R=301]
ErrorDocument 404 /Drop this code in Notepad, change website.com to your info, save as “.htaccess” and upload to the root folder of your website and this will enforce www on all your webpages always.
M
Monetizing too much:
A few ads here and there are fine, but this whole in-between page ad where you have to click to go your destination is horribly aggravating, worse than pop-up ads in my opinion. Which by the way, no legitimate website should still be using pop-up ads, you lose credibility with that kind of setup.
But, the king of all no-no’s is hostage pop-ups, when you attempt to leave a website and you’re forced to click on the box in some fashion and sometimes it really won’t let you leave, you might have to kill your browser process altogether to get away from the thing. If you’re practicing such a method on your website, and your website is actually somehow a legitimate website that isn’t just spam, or trying to take advantage of or hurt people, you need to remove that immediately.
Most people that experience such a hostile tactic are likely going to blacklist your website and NEVER go back back-firing your efforts which are completely counter-productive. As soon as the law catches up with the internet to that extent, that method will most certainly be illegal, not to mention that you could probably already report a website to their host for such activity and have them shut down.
N
No title tag info:
One of the scariest things I could find on a page is either a blank title or a title that reads:
“Untitled Document” – okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration :), but a mistake never-the-less.
O
Overcrowding pages:
If a user feels claustrophobic or doesn’t know where to look they might get frustrated and just leave. If you have a lot of links, look into a drop-down menu, if you have tons of content, split it up into separate pages (I’m starting to wonder how long this article is getting).
P
Pop-up traditional use:
I’m not just talking about pop-up ads (which should never be used), but more info or tip pop-ups. They should no longer be handled in JS pop-up windows or new windows altogether, there are plenty of great methods using CSS and divs and maybe a little JS to get the job done, but these are good pop-ups that don’t get flagged by browsers.
Here are some good sources; Lightbox Gone Wild | The Original Lightbox
Q
Questions going unanswered:
If you use a contact form you should first, definitely make sure that it works and second have copies of emails forwarded to your personal email. Personally, I have many business endeavors that have different email addresses, but I ultimately have them all forward to my personal email, that way I only need to check just that 1 email account to check all emails and I don’t miss anything or waste a bunch of time checking multiple email accounts.
Sometimes you have a big company or a lot of traffic and you want to filter people as much as you can through contact forms, but I find it terribly inconvenient when I can’t find an actual email address for a company so that I can contact them on a more professional basis.
R
Reciprocal link overkill/misuse:
Just in case you weren’t aware; “Links” pages are now frowned upon by Google. You shouldn’t link to just any page because they’re willing to link to you, if you even do link to a website, there should be a good reason, perhaps you’ve partnered with them in some fashion.
Regardless, if you link to someone, it should be relevant… if you have a website about boating don’t link to a website about video games.
S
Social Networks not being utilized:
Stop procrastinating, get it done right now; LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and whatever else. I don’t care if you’re selling laundry detergent, you need to get into the social marketing game.
T
Too simple or complex:
I know that’s a little vague and broad; but if your website isn’t engaging enough, why should anyone stick around and if it’s too complex, hard to find anything or easy to get lost or annoyed no one is going to stick around.
U
Underestimating the competition:
Again, I’m not saying you should bash the competition, but compete by assuming that the competition is always bettering themselves, so you need to continually better your business. SEO / Marketing is a never ending process, and it is never done. Don’t ever look at a competitors websites and think my website looks way better, mission accomplished.
V
Valid code being neglected:
Today’s respected standards compliant web-pages are done with CSS / XHTML Strict, and there are tools to make the validation process easier:
W3C CSS Validator | W3C XHTML Validator
W
Widget overkill:
Sometimes too much is well too much, if you have a weather widget, news widget, games widget, slideshow widget etc. all taking up your websites space in lieu of original content and features, your website will start to look more like a MySpace page than an official and professional website.
X
XX/XY chromosome alienation:
Sometimes a product IS specifically aimed towards a man or a woman because it is only for a man or a woman and that is their intended demographic. However, often based on the way we write as a female or male writer we may inadvertently alienate the opposite sex from a discussion or feature or product etc. by how we word things. Also, because of my growing up in the US my cultural background and references may be influenced by US media culture, but I try to keep my writing open-minded to ALL people who may find interest in it.
Y
YouTube over original content:
I see a lot of blogs where every post is just a music video or something, in place of original content. A YouTube video should never be a focus of an entire post or page, it should merely compliment it. The video is already the focus on YouTube, you’re just sharing a duplicate of the video.
Z
Zero tolerance for criticism:
You’ve got to be able to take criticism, if you can’t you can never learn and build from that knowledge. Some criticism is indeed not constructive, it’s meant to be an insult, but when someone with more experience than you presents feedback to you in a polite, intelligible form, it’s a privilege for you to listen.
So let the criticism, feedback and suggestions begin…
Thanks for reading, Bryan
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