Is the web the same as 10 years ago?
Ten years ago usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote an article detailing the 10 mistakes in web design. Re-visiting that article today it’s amazing how little has changed.
- Using Frames
- Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology
- Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations
- Complex URLs
- Orphan Pages
- Long Scrolling Pages
- Lack of Navigation Support
- Non-Standard Link Colors
- Outdated Information
- Overly Long Download Times
How many of these is your website breaking? I know most sites break at least a few of them.
Don’t forget that these were written before people like me had ever even used the web and before Google was invented. Google had to decide how to rank sites and signals such as url usability and frames were no doubt on their mind when they were looking at how to spider websites.
Don’t forget also the xtlm structure
Comment by alex bennet — January 26, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
My site, http://ww2db.com , is breaking the long URL rule. I’m trying to clean it up a little as time goes on, though.
Comment by Pete — January 26, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
I can see a more improved sites now in terms of design and navigation details, and URL length/structure
Comment by SEO Solutions — January 28, 2008 @ 8:16 pm
I must say that there are still many websites that have more of these mistakes in them but most were written a long time ago. I don’t think newer websites have these problems. At least, mine doesn’t
Comment by Pixy — January 29, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
I also have to say that websites have definitely improved a lot. conversion rate optimization and usability tests are quite common and they pay into the above mentioned list. surely, most websites will break one or two rules, but I think the big bugs and usability mistakes are mostly erased - at least as far as the professional and e-commerce websites are concerned.
Comment by China SEO — February 7, 2008 @ 10:42 am