Finally, after more than three weeks absence, I am back. One minor thing before I proceed. I am sorry to inform that the SEO event for website owners has been moved to another date again. The good thing is that it is now more certain that the new venue and date is final.

The free SEO seminar will now be held on the 8th of September, 7pm at Cliftons Central. This event is organized by BeansBox and SEO Hong Kong, and sponsored by iProA. Special thanks to iProA and Cliftons for the support. Are you a veteran web designer whose years in the industry has produced an evolving family of websites or a newbie trying to learn the grips of a sound web design practice?
 I used to design pages in my own little way before I stepped in to search engine marketing. All these years the way websites are being built have evolved. Factors that contribute to the changes include browser support, HTML standards, Internet speeds and many others.

What used to be good web designs in the past might not necessarily be good anymore. Look at websites that exhibit Flash-heavy content. They used to generate oohs and ahhs for their sophisticated appeal and expertise in Flash. Now they're being branded as bad examples of website usability. Here are other issues that make up a bad web site design:


Loading music as the page loads
Many webmasters think that all people are like them: musically-inclined and believe a site is incomplete and dull without a background music. One message I have for you, you don't serve me something I didn't order. If I like to listen I think I can easily click the play button. In short, give freedom to website visitors instead of serving them something that might annoy them.

Changing browser size
Sometimes websites automatically resize browsers in order to fit the layout of a web page. This happens immediately upon visiting the website. By altering the browser size, users are left with no choice but to go back to the control button and restore the browser size or close the window. Instead of asking users to do extra effort, why not design pages optimized for a full screen browser?

Changing how to navigate a website
As if trying to change the way we eat our breakfast cereal, some webmasters want to change the way we access content. Misplaced navigation menu (placed on the right instead of the conventional top left orientation), search form at the bottom of the page, and so on. I guess visitors need to learn how to get around the site before being able to find what they are looking for.

Built not to work in Firefox, Chrome
Good websites are ideally meant to display well on all browsers. I hate to see websites that show footer notes that say they are best experienced using older browsers. I admit, I used to do that before. Now, we should note that part of the web design job description is to design websites so that they look fine and not cluttered on certain web browsers.

Using old fashioned web design methods
Old fashioned methods in web design aren't necessarily bad. If they are good, they are retained but others should have been deprecated long time ago. Blinking text, scrolling text (unless you're displaying stock quotes), and other outdated means of displaying information should be avoided. They are outdated not because new ones superseded them; they simply offer bad user experience.

Linking to non HTML pages (PDF, Word) without notification text
Links found on web pages are understood as other web pages. However, such statement isn't true all the time. Word Documents, Adobe Acrobat, Excel spreadsheets, and even Windows Media Files are linked too. Linking to these file formats isn't bad at all, provided that users are notified about them. A simple note on an Adobe Acrobat that says "PDF" or "requires Acrobat Reader" should help decide a user to click on the link or not (especially if a machine doesn't have an installed reader software).

Photo credit: paloaltosoftware