52 reasons why your website sucks. I haven’t given them a priority order even though some transgressions are more heinous than others.
- It says “coming soon”
- Obscure error messages pop up to tell you something isn’t right and it’s your fault
- The site is designed based on tables
- Graphics replace text when text would be just fine
- The color scheme looks like vomit
- Navigation is unhelpful in finding your way around
- Graphics are in amazingly large sizes for no particular reason
- <marquee>, <blink>, and other non-standard markup
- No CSS
- It was designed using Microsoft FrontPage
- It uses animated GIFs…
- …of dancing anything
- Something is blinking
- It plays music or movies on the front page without permission…
- … and it’s impossible to find the “off” button
- Poorly written / incoherent copy
- There’s no way to get in touch with the website owner, author, or editor
- Search engines can’t spider your content
- People using screen readers can’t read your content
- Copyright infringement
- The site is designed for 640×480
- The site is designed for larger than 1280×1024
- The site tells you that you need a certain browser or screen resolution
- The site enforces the above policy with JavaScript browser detection and redirects
- It says “under construction”
- The “under construction” banner uses an animated GIF
- The domain name is obscure and hard to write. e.g. 4great888wonderfulz.com
- Your site has duplicate content, perhaps unknowingly
- The url’s to get around your website are difficult for anyone to remember. e.g. site.com?p=1020388&q=949&up=yes%20I%20think%20so
- The back-button has been broken because it will “keep people on the site”
- Your site uses frames to organize content
- The site is missing relevant title tags
- Your site is missing relevant content
- Your site just isn’t relevant
- Splash pages
- Old, outdated text is being billed as “news”
- Old, outdated text is marked as being old and outdated. E.g. “updated on 12/9/2001”
- Pop-up browser windows are evil, even if they don’t contain ads
- Your site messes with the browser interface elements. Perhaps it colors the scroll bar or disables the right click.
- Font-abuse (size, color, style, font)
- You have links labeled “click here”
- You have links that aren’t obviously links
- You have text that looks like a link, but isn’t
- The site copy (text) cannot be scanned easily (we don’t read, we scan for information)
- here has been no attempt at creating semantic markup
- Lists aren’t created by using <li> tags
- The site says “welcome to…”
- The design of the website does not match the character of the organization or entity it represents
- The site makes me scroll horizontally
- All necessary white-space has been eliminated
- Unnecessary white-space has been added
- The website does not validate, or even come close