Does your website suck?

I was at a loss this week as to what to do my article about. I have been a bit overworked, and my brain just wasn’t functioning properly. So, I did what I always did in this situation: I aimlessly wandered the net. Aimless surfing brings me to a ton of websites, both those made for entertainment purposes, and those made for serious ones, ecommerce included.

There was one website that really stuck out for me, and that was Web Pages That Suck. What I thought was so brilliant about this website was its checklist, which offers a whole mess of things to look for when trying to decide if you are creating a good looking, functional website, or a cancerous tumor on the rear end of the Internet.

This seemed extremely relevant to me, because I see some awful business websites in my line of work. I mean some certifiably awful, laughable attempts at drawing in customers. You have to feel sorry for these guys, because they seem to genuinely not realize their errors. What is worst is that some of the people reading this right now will be one of them, or at least be on their way to becoming one of them.

Trust me, this is one label you don’t want to have. It is more than just embarrassing for your company, it will also lose you customers. The Internet is such a huge part of business now that some people won’t even go with a company that doesn’t have a website that meets their needs. With the average life of a consumer being so busy, this isn’t surprising. They hardly have the time to get to a shop, or do comparison buying in person.

You can check out the checklist on Web Pages That Suck, but I thought I would add a few things that bother me, as a consumer. This list is provides the points I look for when I am searching for a company to meet my needs (or, more commonly, my wants). Some of these are deal breakers, most are minor annoyances. But I guarantee I am not the only one who would list them.

My Personal List of Business Site Annoyances

Cross browser incompatibility, major issues that disable certain important features of the website on a specific browser
A lack of explanation for what the company does or provides.
Too few options for contacting the company or customer service (i.e. It only provides an online submission form, or only a P.O. Box). Please note that while it is absolutely fine to do so, you should also provide alternative contact method in case the others fail (for example, what if your only contact us form is broken itself?)
No information of who owns the company, or where its headquarter is located.
No pricing information.
Broken links, a bad layout, or general design no-no’s.
No way to purchase through the website. (this is not exactly something important, but when people are looking to buy stuffs online they don’t want to visit offline only stores)
Too many graphics.
Bugs that haven’t been dealt with, such as a graphic interfering with the ability to click on a link.

I see these things all the time, and I am talking from large corporations, here. But those corporations get so much business that they don’t care about inconveniencing a few hundred people, because they don’t rely on their website to drum up customers. When you are a small or medium sized company you have to take extra care to provide a website that will be better than the big guys, and more user friendly.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying those things about are the only issues that could make a site suck, or even that if you have one (or more) of them your site immediately does. But I know they tend to turn me off as a consumer, and I am sure they would other consumers as well. It is something to keep in mind next time you are looking over the plans for a revamp on your homepage.

Does your website suck?

My Personal List of Business Site Annoyances

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