Jacob Nielsen Top Ten Mistakes

What are the top ten web mistakes in web design?

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for May 1996 (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html) has produced a list of the Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design, which are briefly discussed here.

Using Frames - breaks up the fundamental user model of the web page and prevents the use of the browser 'back' button as the URL is for the frame and not the whole page.
Gratuitous Use of "Bleeding-Edge" Technology - using methods which are not tried and tested nor installed on less recent browsers and hardware.
Scrolling text, Marquees and constantly running animations - these tend to annoy users and take away control. Anything that annoys a user should be avoided.
Complex URLs - users will try to type in a URL to get to a page rather than trust navigational aids. It should be possible to stay within three levels of folders/directories in the URL structure.
Orphan pages - where there is no clearly marked route backwards or forwards and the page has insufficient titles to show where you are, or what connections the page has with the rest of the site.
Long scrolling pages - it may aid presentation to keep a page to a single window display without the need to scroll down for more. In other words break up long texts into more single window displays.
Lack of navigation support - let the user know where they are and where they can go from where they are. Provide navigational aids consistently.
Non Standard link colours - keep to the standard colours for links. Pages that have not been seen are blue, while those that have been seen should be purple or red. These are the default colours on most browsers and are the colours the majority of users will expect.
Out dated Information - Keep the information up to date.
Overly long download times - Keep download times to 10 or 15 seconds. Users will not wait longer.

Jakob Nielsen is probably the leading design 'guru' of Internet web pages who was responsible for the not inconsiderable task of consulting in the design of the BBC web site, which is regarded as one of the best in the world. There are critics of his work, though difficult to find and not always well expressed , but overall the top tens have lasted the test of time. His web site http://www.useit.com contains valuable information on this and other aspects of design.

| previous page gizmos | next page usability