Worst of the Web

– Robert Kruger 30 June 2010

It’s back: our “Worst of the Web” rant. I can’t exactly say it’s back by popular demand, but I can say it’s back because the web continues to annoy me.

This is not a top ten list. It’s just a few random topics. More will come. If I didn’t mention one that really annoys you, share it with me, and I’ll share it with the world.

Click here? You can’t make me.

Before you make another button that says, “Click here”, please take a moment to think, “Is there something else I could say here that makes this button easier to understand or more useful for my audience?” Really. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Buy one of these things.
• Please contact me.
• This article is cool.
• Give me the details.
• I want to participate.
• Rock my world.

Please - say something meaningful. “Click here” was a bad idea the first time it was used. Every subsequent usage has moved Homo sapiens closer to Lemmus lemmus. Make it stop!

Don’t autofill a form with the wrong information.

Interactive forms are some of the dullest content on anyone’s website. We all know this, but some web developers haven’t fully accepted this as inevitable. They continue to try to find new ways to confuse users with the rules they apply to interactive forms. The worst is when they neglect to put something like “Select one” as the default entry on a dropdown menu.

Here’s an example of bad dropdown autofill that recently got the best of one of my business partners, Brett Barron. He completed the ship-to form on an ecommerce website. It didn’t like one of his answers, so it made him complete the form again, only the second time around, the “State” field changed from what he had chosen back to the first item on the list, which was “Alabama”. When he re-submitted the form, it validated that all fields were completed correctly, and they shipped his order to Dallas, Alabama.

Save cleverness for the meaningful message on your website. Make the interactive forms easy to use and difficult to break - and nothing more.

Don’t open a window. It’s hot outside.

This one amazes me because I can’t get my head around why anyone would do this. Some websites seem to randomly mix up nav functionality so that some buttons move the site visitor to a new page and other buttons open a new browser window. There is no upside to this practice. The user experience is awful, and it’s harmful to the site owner’s business. Here’s why: you click on a nav button (opens a new window), you look, then you close the window, you click on another button (doesn’t open a new window), you look, then you close the window. Now the site is gone. Lost. You may have Googled for the site and read through a page or two of search results to find the site. Are you going to go through all that again? Not likely.

It’s so easy to lose track of windows when the UI logic is inconsistent, it’s almost inevitable that you will close every window that pertains to the site. I’m so annoyed when that happens, I don’t go back, even if I know the URL.

When Dialogs Professional Services works with customers to plan information architecture, we help steer the project away from choices that may annoy site visitors. Ask us to walk through your site with you. We promise we won’t be annoying.