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Beginner Web Design Mistakes

blog.teamtreehouse.com

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Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#11

Post by nickpettit »

onion2k wrote: post #2

A 'sign up for our newsletter' modal pop-up when the user first arrives on a website is not a 'beginner web design mistake' for one simple reason that even websites made by beginners can't ignore: They really work. People sign up in droves. Many people have tested it. It's annoying as hell, but the fact is beginner website designers should learn to make effective websites that work for businesses, not just pretty one…

Our data scientist at Treehouse actually tested this extensively, but it's such a complex issue (lots of qualitative/anecdotal/branding evidence that's difficult to measure) that the results are still inconclusive. Basically, it helped us and hurt us in different ways, but the long term effects seemed bad enough that we stopped.

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#12

Post by nhebb »

> Modals and Pop-Ups - You’ve seen this before. You click on a link to a news article or a blog post, and a gigantic modal pop-up window covers the content. This makes absolutely no sense.

The first thing that popped into my head was Twitter, when you click on @someone and get a popup instead of just going to their full feed.

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#13

Post by jeffmould »

nhebb wrote: post #12

> Modals and Pop-Ups - You’ve seen this before. You click on a link to a news article or a blog post, and a gigantic modal pop-up window covers the content. This makes absolutely no sense. The first thing that popped into my head was Twitter, when you click on @someone and get a popup instead of just going to their full feed.

I actually kind of like that feature (if you can call it that). There are times when I am scanning through the feed and I see something interesting retweeted. I don't want to lose my place, but I am curious to see quickly who the person is that initially made the tweet. The popup is a quick way to do that without having to open another window or lose your place.

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#14

Post by zachrose »

If the page is for something I want to read, then a wall of text is perfect.

If the page is not something I want to read, then there should be less writing, but also why are we having a disagreement about what's on your webpage if I don't want to read your content in the first place?

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#15

Post by adamtj »

jeffmould wrote: post #13
nhebb wrote: post #12

> Modals and Pop-Ups - You’ve seen this before. You click on a link to a news article or a blog post, and a gigantic modal pop-up window covers the content. This makes absolutely no sense. The first thing that popped into my head was Twitter, when you click on @someone and get a popup instead of just going to their full feed.

I actually kind of like that feature (if you can call it that). There are times when I am scanning through the feed and I see something interesting retweeted. I don't want to lose my place, but I am curious to see quickly who the person is that initially made the tweet. The popup is a quick way to do that without having to open another window or lose your place.

That's what the back button is for. I will take you back to where you were before you clicked a link, including scroll down the page to the correct position.

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#16

Post by Jare »

adamtj wrote: post #15
jeffmould wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually kind of like that feature (if you can call it that). There are times when I am scanning through the feed and I see something interesting retweeted. I don't want to lose my place, but I am curious to see quickly who the person is that initially made the tweet. The popup is a quick way to do that without having to open another window or lose your place.

That's what the back button is for. I will take you back to where you were before you clicked a link, including scroll down the page to the correct position.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with infinite scroll pages or other stateful types of sites.

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#17

Post by hfsktr »

atacrawl wrote: post #8

Definitely +1 for both "Thinking Too Far Outside the Box" and "Mysterious and Complex Navigation." I experience way too much of each on a regular basis. A message I try to drill home is "people don't come to websites to be wowed, they come to either learn about something or buy something."

Just out of curiosity are there more options than that? I don't think I'd lump Imgur or Tumblr into either of those categories.

Edit: entertainment. Thought of it on my own...

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#18

Post by sutterbomb »

Two of the five "mistakes" aren't always mistakes. Popups often work really well, as pointed out in another comment by onion2k. Long-form sales pages (i.e. walls of text) also really work in many contexts. Sure you want to execute both of them well, but the basic ideas aren't necessarily mistakes.

Two others strike me as not really an issue or too vague to know whether it was an issue. Do beginner web designers really never use any padding and just cram everything next to each other, pixel by pixel? Can't say I've seen it. And are they really thinking too far outside the box? What would this even entail?

I'll give them navigation issue, but I can't say they offered much insight for beginners to actually work from and improve their navigation.

Re: Beginner Web Design Mistakes

#19

Post by sutterbomb »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #4
onion2k wrote: post #2

A 'sign up for our newsletter' modal pop-up when the user first arrives on a website is not a 'beginner web design mistake' for one simple reason that even websites made by beginners can't ignore: They really work. People sign up in droves. Many people have tested it. It's annoying as hell, but the fact is beginner website designers should learn to make effective websites that work for businesses, not just pretty one…

They work on clueless and naive people. If that's the audience you're after, cool.

This is simply not true. Sure, you'll get signups from people aren't actually in your target market (clueless and naive), but at the margin you'll also get signups from people are intelligent and high value prospects that wouldn't have otherwise signed up if you weren't aggressive about offering it.

To deny the potential value of x by categorically defining all the people who you think would respond to x is ignorance at best and most likely just hubris.

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