
Mistakes Web Designers Make - johnjlocke
http://ninjasandrobots.com/three-mistakes-i-see-web-designers-make-over-and-over-again
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joshuaheard
As a suggestion to, "You've buried the lede.": use an About link. Even his
example, Basecamp; I have no idea what they do. They "help groups work
together"? Details, please. Have an About link so I can go and get a complete
description of what you do. This is especially important for startups. (Put it
next to the Contact link.)

~~~
crazygringo
This, times a million. There's some kind of bizarre belief that people don't
want to ever read more than a sentence and a half of text, so links to "About"
pages are often buried somewhere obscure in a footer, or worse, there isn't
even one.

It's not enough for me to know what the product is -- I need the _details_ \--
why does it exist? What does it do specifically, and what does it not?
Sometimes I'll find myself checking if there's a Wikipedia page for the site,
just because the site can't manage to tell me directly just what the heck it
is, exactly.

(A particularly egregious example of this is when a site focuses on presenting
a product as a "solution" and tells you what it solves -- well, without
telling me exactly _how_ you solve it, it's pretty useless to me.)

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a9entroy
You forgot "microscopic font size".

Why is this even a thing? Who thought microscopic text was attractive? It's
such a turn off. I instantly close a page if I have to strain my eyes to read
the text.

~~~
lelandbatey
Maybe it's just me, but I pretty much never see that. Are there any common
examples?

Though I do notice when text is well laid out. A nicely chosen font, a page
that's comfortably wide-but-not-to-wide, good spacing and thought out
contrast. As well, when there's nothing but the text (or as little else as
possible) it's just perfect.

I've really tried to do that with my own projects like <http://xwl.me> . I
really just wanted the nicest reading experience for random [0]things that I
feel like writing and posting on the web.

Btw, I'd actually love it if there's more I can do for readability. I really
just want this to be as easy on my eyes as possible, but I'm often not the
best judge of that.

[0] - <http://xwl.me/md/b4aa7u4hof178z2>

~~~
adregan
If you are really looking for some readability tips, might I suggest one? Via
the incredibly influential, albeit dry, _The Elements of Typographic Style_ by
Robert Bringhurst[1] concerning the "comfortable measure," which I find to be
the most important aspect of readable text:

> Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory

> length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text
> size.

> The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded
> as ideal.

The measure on your site is around 99 characters and that's a bit large. The
best way I've found to work on the character length involves a dead simple tip
I appropriated from Trent Walton[2]. If you add an asterisk at the 66
character of a line, you can easily manipulate the font-size up and down (I
prefer percentages on the body element and ems on the individual elements, and
then fuss with the single percentage) until you achieve an appealing measure.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Sty...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style)

[2]<http://trentwalton.com/>

~~~
lelandbatey
I realize I'm catching this a bit late, but I wanted to thank you for the
tips! This is exactly the kind of thing that I was hoping to learn, thank you!

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MichaelApproved
Don't forget low contrast fonts. I've seen many pages where the designer likes
a soft font color that blends into the background and is hard to read.

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callmeed
_If you're a wedding photographer, it's probably contact you for work. If
you're a website designer, same thing._

I create/sell websites for photographers and this is very true. One specific
mistake I see them make is labeling their contact link something non-obvious
(presumably to be hip/different). The anchor text of their contact link will
be something like "inquire" or "connect" or "say hi". I should probably run
some tests but my hunch is this is bad.

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weixiyen
I rather like the Parallax portfolio sites. They simply value emotional design
over usability to offer an immersive experience. It's a different approach,
and for a portfolio site, I'd argue it's better.

~~~
nate
Ah, thanks for this. I definitely like the Paralax portfolio sites too. I
didn't mean that using a paralax or scrolling site was a bad idea at all. I
just wanted to raise a warning that while creating a site like that, you
probably still want to create a very obvious method on immediate page load to
convert this user before they need to scroll.

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create028
I completely agree with your first point, 'You've buried the lede' and this is
a mistake I see on a daily basis. Great design should never say "look at me"
it should always say "look at this".

The first steps to achieving this and therefore avoiding the mistakes you
mention are to cohesively join your UX and UI teams or designers into one
fluid process. One will never work well, without the other. What are you
saying and how are you saying it is the basis for ensuring your core company
message is translated effectively over any medium.

If in doubt always ask yourself, 'would my mum get it', she might not be the
target audience but your design should be that simple to understand and
decipher. No-one wants to have to go to an about us page, or scroll endlessly
down a page to 'get it', otherwise why do we bother having headlines on
newspaper articles? Simplicity is difficult, but this is the challenge all
great designers should embrace.

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ellie42
>Basecamp has a great homepage.

Stopped reading there.

~~~
jwdunne
Designers here may agree but programmers, of which I'm sure HN has a majority
and like myself, would love to know why exactly this made you stop reading.
Currently, "stopped reading there" adds nothing useful to the discussion at
all and it even seems pretty rude.

~~~
raylu
OK, it's rude. But Basecamp makes mistake #2 from the article, which is
actually a mistake to call it a mistake.

Really? Testimonials? Out of all of the potential and made-up customer
feedback, you've hand-selected a few data points to advertise on your
homepage. Even if they were randomly selected (obviously not), reducing the
data down to mere anecdotes is... stupid. Insanely stupid. I can't even wrap
my head around why people would ever base a decision on that.

And so when it presents the thought bubble of the woman thinking about how she
uses Basecamp and the fact that, of the extremely unbiased sample of people
who use Basecamp (haha), 97% of them recommend Basecamp, I'm just unimpressed.

Here's my number one beef with homepages: I still don't what your product
actually _specifically_ does. I don't want generalizations like "manage your
projects" and "keep track of every file, discussion, and event" (what the hell
is an event?). I want something concrete like "Basecamp lets you write words,
puts checkboxes next to them, then moves them around randomly" (I'm not a fan
of the product so my summarization may be biased).

~~~
bprieto
No, it's not stupid. It's how most people think: hey, this girl is like me and
she loves the product, so I will love the product too.

Unless your product is developed for engineers, having testimonials in your
sales materials is a must, and throwing lists of hard facts and functions is a
sure way to scare customers off.

~~~
raylu
So you embrace the idea of catering to and selling to idiots? What's the
difference between what you do and what a conman does?

~~~
6d0debc071
Well, if the girl really is like you, then that's a fairly good strategy and
not necessarily like a con-man. If I can distinguish quality and she's another
me, then in effect I already like the thing on good grounds.

The disconnect comes in the implicit question I suppose: _Are_ they really
like me? I doubt most developers are likely to see the world as being full of
kindred spirits with sharp minds that distinguish quality.

It's like Amazon reviews for earphones, (or whatever.) If there are a load of
really terrible reviews then that's good evidence that something really is
terrible. But since most people know little about a product or class of
products their ability to compare things to the top-end is pretty much non-
existent.

If they really are like you, then the deal makes sense. If you know a bit more
about the subject than average then the deal is atrocious.

An even better deal would be if they were like an idealised you, I suppose.
Make the choices that you'd make if you knew better. But you can't communicate
with most people on those grounds for obvious reasons.

~~~
raylu
So you're saying Basecamp tries to accurately portray a neutral individual
making a decision to use or not use their product rather than someone who's
conclusion supports their agenda? That's beyond ridiculous.

That's one step beyond believing an "independent, third-party" report
commissioned by McDonalds to show that their burgers make you healthy or cure
cancer or whatever. Basecamp is not even pretending to be neutral.

~~~
6d0debc071
I'm not saying they try to accurately portray anything. I'm just saying that's
what it hooks into. Obviously, as with any communication medium, you can lie
your arse off - and I'm sure people frequently do. You can do the same with
stats as with testimonials - who's going to check, and how?

If you assume a company's lying, there's probably very little that they can
say to get you on board.

~~~
raylu
There's a difference between being presented with stats and a company's
homepage which is designed specifically to get you on board. It's not that I
don't trust anything I hear, it's that I assume that a company is cherry-
picking the best anecdotes.

But there are ways to present information that don't seem stupid. In
particular, Basecamp is doing two things here that are misleading. First,
they're not actually presenting data, they're presenting anecdote(s). Second,
they're presenting them in a medium which should be viewed with extra
skepticism.

I don't want to know what percentage of your paying customers like you
(seriously? 3% of your customers use you but dislike your product?). What I
want to know is what specifically you do and how you do it. _Everything else
is noise_ \- and so the entire page is noise.

~~~
6d0debc071
They can still cherry pick the best indicators for their stats, and/or
favourable statistical tests.

Still, I can understand why you'd feel that way, and I don't really disagree
with you that that's more what I'd find interesting. But as to whether that's
what most people would be interested in, and whether that's what would
sell.... _-shrug-_ I'm not sure that all attempts at sales makes you a con
man. Trying to demonstrate to people who may not understand how a certain
thing would advantage them that it would, or that people who are like them
think it would, doesn't necessarily amount to a stitch up job. I can
understand that you'd view it as noise, but it seems to me at the moment to
perhaps be a little harsh to call someone who may just be trying to put the
best foot forwards a con man when they may be operating in good faith.

