6 things that shouldn’t be on your company website
We can’t all keep up with the joneses when it comes to our company websites – and with so much advice out there about what should and shouldn’t be on your site it’s hard to know whether you’re staying ahead of the competition, or lagging behind.
There are some things, however, which should be kept a million miles away from your company’s online presence; and this article looks at just 6 of those “features” which you really should be steering clear of.
The world of website design moves so fast that you’d be forgiven if you’re not constantly on the cutting edge – however there are some things which deserve to be permanently moved to the deep, dark depths of Internet hell.
In this article I take a quick, tongue-in-cheek look at the 6 things which really shouldn’t be anywhere near your company website!
Need a hit?
Visitor/”Hit” Counters
Not only are these things bloody hideous, they’re also wildly inaccurate, so there is absolutely no justification for having this abomination on your website! If you want to know how many visitors you’re getting then you’d be better served using an analytics package such as Google Analytics.
Advertisements
There is no better way of cheapening your website than plastering it with third party adverts. If you run an information site or blog etc then that’s fair enough, but an accountancy firm with banner ads for Viagra does not send a great message! Same goes for “link swapping”- where the owners of two unrelated websites exchange links – I’d have to question why my solicitor has a link to “Sloppy Joe’s Tattoo Parlour” on his website!
Iframes
This is a tricky one as iframes are going through something of a renaissance at the moment, being used to deliver HTML5 content such as in Youtube’s new video embed codes. What I’m referring to are the ugly iframes of old – embedding one website in another, complete with ugly scroll bars. Get rid of them please!
Third-party uglies
The main thing that springs to mind here are those horrible “as featured on FreeIndex” buttons you’re required to have on your site in order to be listed on the aforementioned directory. Things like this stick out like a sore thumb and massively cheapen your website, so consider whether it’s really worth having them.
Tired gimmicks
Background music, snowflakes falling down the screen at Xmas, novelty cursors – all belong back in the 90′s, so please be sure you’re not besmirching your website with this rubbish!
Comic Sans
No… Just no.
But it looks so sad!
I’m confident you, dear reader, are not committing any of these cardinal web design sins, but if you are, now’s your chance to rectify them before anybody notices!
I would add to that: a twitter stream. A time and place for every thing, if I really wanted to know your twitter activity, I would follow you. there’s no need to clutter your website with this.
Finally, video [that plays automatically]: nuff said.
Definitely agree on video’s that play automatically – hate that, especially when the video starts playing before the website is fully loaded, so you have no idea where the sound is coming from. Speaking of which, background music – terrible.
Half agree with you on the twitter stream – it’s all about execution for me; a lot of people integrate their Twitter streams well, so it fits with the site and doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb or distract from the main content; but so many people just use the ugly pre-made widgets that Twitter provide. Same goes for Facebook widgets and Google+ too. Those all definitely fall into the “third party uglies” category!