8 Site Features That You Should Avoid

When creating websites some features sound like a great idea but in reality they only detract visitors. Even though the <blink> tag is gone (thank goodness!) there are many other equally annoying “features” that people often use, but shouldn’t. Here’s a list of these features you should avoid.

1. Marquees

Marquees were nice back in the 90s, but now they’re annoying and have been deprecated and removed as of HTML5. Readers don’t want to have to wait for the text to scroll so that they can read it all; they want the information now so that they can skip parts that they aren’t interested in.

2. Background Music

Background music is extremely annoying, especially if it automatically plays and/or you can’t stop it. No, we don’t all want to hear your favorite song. Trust us, your website will not gain traffic if you add background music.

3. Tons of Fonts

Having over 2-3 fonts on one page doesn’t look good. You want to focus on content and readability, not how many fonts you can stuff into one page.

4. Text Links

Text links are a very obnoxious way for you to monetize your sites. Visitors don’t want to accidentally bring up a dialog box whenever they accidentally hover over some word. Stick with traditional ads for your visitors sake.

5. Ads with Sound

Though it’s great that I just won a new iPod I don’t want to hear ads making noise. People go to your site for information, most people tolerate static ads but ads making noise is just too much, especially if your visitor is listening to music.

6. Splash Pages

Splash pages are simply irritating and they make one more step for the user to get to the content. No, they don’t make your website look professional.

7. Popups

Popups are terribly annoying, they shift the focus away from your site and if I see popups on a site it makes me want to leave.

8. Frame based Designs

Frames are terribly annoying when you’re trying to navigate through a website. Why? Because the back and forward buttons never work properly and if you try to open a link in a new tab you only open that frame, not the rest of the site.

We hope you don’t use any of these terrible elements of the web in the future. Are we missing something? Leave a comment telling us what features you think should be avoided.