Your primary goal as a web designer is to hook users and keep them, so reading the following points below should assist you in not losing them by annoying them! These irritations are enough to have them move on and keep browsing.
Link after link after link
If a user has to click more than 3 times to find what they are looking for, maybe your site is not set up efficiently.
Misleading Links
It’s both annoying and frustrating for a user to click a link to a web page he desires only to be led to an entirely new site, of which they have no interest. It is a waste of time, and very annoying to the site’s users. If you wish to lose your visitors, this is one sure way.
Grey text on white
Grey text on white backgrounds is simply harder to read than black text on white backgrounds.
Sound!
Music and podcasts that start automatically annoy the user. They will listen to it when they are ready to do so.
Pop ups
Many people don’t enjoy having to close the window on every single page that they visit. Especially when they are built to overlay content which the user may be trying to read. Leave them as a static link built into the content design and the user will click it when they need to.
Typography
No-one wants to see carnival styled writing on a website regarding funeral parlours! Think of the relevance and the style most suitable.
Unable to re-size text
Users of all ages make use of computers and some have vision problems. It is terribly frustrating when one cannot use the re-size or zoom in to get the text to be able to read it.
Too many graphics
Believe it or not, many still have slow connections. Putting too many graphics on your page, or anything else design-wise that slows the pages down, and you are sure to lose the user.
A few extras for good measure
- 3-D advertising that jumps out when the mouse goes near it.
- Sites that use new adobe versions and want you to upgrade to use the site.
- Sites that use new Java and pester you to download the latest version to use their site.
- Css built sites that jump all over the place until all the downloads are finished.
- Css/xml/flash sign-in panels that are not part of the page so login software doesn’t work.