Website (and other) Blunders
At a conference I attended a couple of years ago, one of the speakers, a marketing expert, collected business cards for a draw, which is a common practice. As part of his presentation, he went through the cards he’d collected and shared his comments about those he found to be very good - or very bad. I thought that was very disrespectful to his audience, especially as he did not hesitate to read the names out loud of the people whose cards he criticized. Much to my relief, I was not one of them!
Since that time, I attended another event where the speaker used PowerPoint to show what not to do on your website. Again, I was relieved that none of the sites I’d created were used as examples! There is an entire website dedicated to that topic: Web Pages That Suck. Feeling a little more secure these days, I decided to check it out. The purpose of the site is to show you what doesn’t work by providing examples. There are all kinds of great tips and some really bad websites to illustrate them.
One usability issue that the makers of Web Pages That Suck seem to have overlooked is cross-browser compatibility. When I brought up their site in my preferred browser, Mozilla Firefox, the banner shows up properly at the top of the page, but after that, the entire structure breaks down. As of June 2007, 34% of Internet users are using Firefox, so it is becoming more and more important to make sure that your website displays properly in browsers other than Internet Explorer.
If you haven’t tried Firefox, simply click on the button below to download it to your computer.
After you’ve done that, don’t forget to check out Web Pages That Suck!
I’ve been an avid FireFox user for a while. I absolutely detest when I go to a site that isn’t fixed so that it can work in any of them. Makes me a little crazy
Comment by Candy — July 25, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
Hey Janet,
As one of my volunteer duties I “analyze” website statistics for a busy website. I have found that over the past year the percentage of people using Firefox has been steadily increasing as are the number of people using Macs and Safari. It is definitely important to make sure your website can be viewed by ALL of your potential clients.
Comment by Jacki Hollywood Brown — July 26, 2007 @ 1:14 pm