Website Grievances as Told by the PaperStreet Development Team
By PaperStreet on May 3, 2016 in Web Design Tips and Tools
Our Least Favorite Features on Popular Websites
At PaperStreet our development team works hard to push out awesome sites. Using best practices, consistently polishing codes, and optimizing processes, we devs work hard to deliver the best results. Once the coding is done for the day, each of us goes back home to relax, enjoy some hobbies, and at some point, web browse…
But it’s never just browsing. We always have a critical eye for every website we visit. Sometimes we’ll find amazing websites worth sharing to the team – these are websites that wow and make us appreciate the possibilities code advancements present us.
Yet, other times we’ll find frustrating, painful-to-stare-at, could-use-a-lot-of-work, sites.
Our Website Pet Peeves
We thought you would appreciate some of the more annoying/upsetting/bothersome things us devs find on popular websites:
“I dislike when the site is set up to work in an abnormal matter that is completely not user friendly, starting from design down to functionality. Learning as an intern to QA, no matter how big or small the site may be, there needs to be flow. If there isn’t a flow or things don’t make sense, it bothers me that it is not simplified to make it easier and appealing to the user.”
– Stephanie, Custom Developer
“I hate when the contact form pop up comes out every five seconds. I hate sites that take forever to load. I hate out of date sites (time to upgrade dude).”
– Chris, Support Developer
“A development peeve of mine is when I mouse over a button or link and the item does not change. Creating hover states is a quick and simple way to indicate a link is active and can be clicked on.”
– Scott, Tech Director
“A pet peeve of mine would be websites that are not mobile friendly or have poor mobile usability.”
– Andrew, Web Director
“How about when blocks of text are used as images? It can’t be copied, read by crawlers, and it’s bad for accessibility.”
– Mike, Support Developer
“My big peeve is websites that are not mobile-friendly. There is nothing worse than when I am using my cell phone and some site will reference the information needed only to find the link takes me to a non-mobile site and the landing page is not mobile friendly.”
– Allan, Quality Assurance
“I hate site pop-ups. You jump on a site and suddenly pop-ups come up for one reason or another. That and lacking an easy way to ‘go back’ on a site would be my biggest frustrations.”
– Gui, Project Manager
“Pop-ups. When first loading up a website having a lot of pop-ups is distracting.”
– Kyle, Custom Developer
“What about my website grievance? That’s easy – sites with large background images with their text directly on it. If there’s no extra background behind the text then chances are I won’t be able to read it. That frustrates me to no end.”
– Allison, Essentials Developer
Avoid Our Website Pet Peeves
So, here’s some very basic, simple starter-tips from our team to someone building a website for the first time:
- Avoid pop ups (if possible)
- Use live text and not text images
- Ensure text can be read clearly on colored or image backgrounds
- Keep a simple but flowing design, something users can easily navigate
- Ensure all links have a style change when a user moves their mouse over them (hover states)
- Avoid images or files that are too large and may cause the website to load slower
- Mobile-friendly! Mobile is not really a recommendation anymore – get a mobile friendly website
Contact PaperStreet for a Website Checkup
If you think your website might be out-of-date, or if you lost faith in your previous development team, PaperStreet can help. We offer website analysis services and can point out issues (big and small), including load speed, a lack of hover states and bad content.
Get in touch with our Sales Manager to learn more about how PaperStreet can improve your website.
