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Thursday
Jan162014

These Web "Features" Must Die

Here is a welcome piece in Mashable about annoying, passe, or just plain useless web "features" or design elements. 

My least favorite elements are

  • needlessly presenting sites as slides (Business Insider is notorious for this), instead of long scrolling pages or, at least, regular old "next pages" (like TNW),
  • the below-mentioned photo carousels (e.g. Fast Company's Co.DESIGN, Co.EXIST, Co.CREATE, Co.LABS), and, also mentioned below, 
  • automated pop-ups (e.g., PCMag.com). 

12 Outdated Web Features That Need to Disappear in 2014

BY SCOTT GERBER

We've all been there — yelling at a computer screen or particular website because the antiquated design prevents you from getting where you want to go.

But outdated features on your company's website can do more than annoy — it can cost you potential clients or customers.

To figure out what exactly agitates users the most, we asked 12 entrepreneurs which website features small businesses should avoid (or get rid of) at all costs. Here's what they had to say:

The piece goes on to cite:

  1. Irrelevant elements. (Clutter is always bad.)
  2. Flash intros
  3. Photo carousels
  4. Large hero images. (But see here.)
  5. Stock photos 
  6. Animated GIFs
  7. Autoplay videos
  8. Automated pop-ups
  9. "Hello, world" blog posts
  10. Sidebars
  11. Reloading pages 
  12. M. sites (mobile sites, of the form m._____.___) 

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