I was just commissioned to make a bad site. No, it’s not that we have a client with no taste—this one is intentionally bad. Our Video department is making a promotional video to show how our web development teams can improve web sites. To tell the truth, though, I’m actually a little happy about this project. My time in web design has taught me quite a bit about what makes a bad web page, and I finally get a chance to show the public how bad these bad things can be. (Admittedly, not everyone will be as riled up about these things as I am. I don’t care. I’m angry.) So, for your reading pleasure and in no particular order, here are the top five things to avoid in web pages (according to me).

1. Don’t use images without alternate text.
   I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a web site, used a form, and found the submit button to be a small image with no alternate text. Alternate text is text that shows up when the image can’t load for whatever reason. In Internet Explorer, the alt text will pop up when you hold your mouse pointer over an image. So in this scenario, if there’s a minor server slowdown that causes the image not to load, or the user has his or her images turned off to save on download time, there’s no way to submit the form.

   In addition, there are quite a few users who simply can’t view images. An estimated 4.7 million users have visual disabilities and nearly 10 million surf the web using cell phones—in the United States alone. Don’t ban these people from your web site.

2. Don’t use “mystery meat” navigation.
   “Mystery meat” navigation is a term coined by Web Pages That Suck and refers to navigation links that aren’t clearly marked or discernable until you move your mouse over them. It’s initially attractive because it’s flashy—it’s animated and interactive—but oftentimes, the user has no idea that they’re links until he or she accidentally mouses over them. Don’t confuse your users. If they can’t find out how to navigate your site, they’ll never come back.
3. Don’t bunch up your text.
   The average online reader has the attention span of an adolescent fruit fly. If someone sees a long span of text, or even a really long paragraph, he or she will usually stop reading right there. Keep pages, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences short and easy to digest. If you have a lot of content on one subject that you have to present, break it up into multiple pages.
4. Don’t assume that people want to read everything you have to say.
   In the same vein as the last one, don’t test users’ attention spans. Figure out what’s relevant to and necessary for your web site and leave it at that. If users have to wade through fifty links to find what they’re looking for, even the important content on your site is likely to be missed.

   This is doubly important in e-mails. If your e-mail marketing piece has more than a couple of paragraphs, almost none of it will get read.

5. Don’t make your pages too big to download.
   The total size of a web page is the size of the page itself plus the size of all linked objects (mainly images and videos). You have to weigh this against your target audience’s average download speed. Cable modems get an average of 708 kb/second, and DSL lines get an average of 467 kb/second—but dial-up users only get a download speed of 7 kb/second on average. Just this week, I ran across a blog that was 977k (that’s just the homepage, not the whole site). That’s 2.3 minutes of download time for a dialup user. I doubt even the blogger’s mother would wait that long to read a post.

   Trim down your page’s overall file size by reducing the number of linked images, videos and other media. If you have a video, don’t force the user to download it unless it’s absolutely vital that it be on that page. (You can put videos on their own pages, though—just make sure the user knows that they will be downloading a large file.)

Making sure your web sites follow these simple guidelines will make your web sites more effective and make the Web a better place for everyone. Also, if you’re ever commissioned to create a bad site, you now know what to do.