5 Annoying Habits in Blog Design

This list contains some of the most annoying habits that can be found on many web sites on the internet. Is your blog guilty of any of these? If so you could be driving away your visitors, read on for annoying traits and some simple solutions:

1. Underlining things that aren’t links.

There’s nothing more annoying then looking at a bulk of text and foraging around trying to work out which are links and which are just average words. Both the most savvy and the newest users of the web are trained to click underlined words as links, and if you’re underlining for emphasis you could be annoying new visitors into leaving your site.

Solution: stick <em> tags around the word instead to give them emphasis.

2. Using stolen images.
The amount of times I have seen web sites using band’s photos, scans of models and other images they’re not entitled to use is actually astronomical. Many of the bands/models/photographers could really have a field day suing people over copyright issues. If you are guilty of taking other people’s work (for example using a photograph not taken by yourself, or that you do not have permission to use) then you should consider using stock imagery or learning how to create good images yourself. Personally, if I see another boring emo band layout that rips off people’s brushes, photographer’s images and people’s fonts I think I’ll smash up my computer!

Solution: Visit stock image sites, read up on copyright, and what types of images are usable for what works. I.e. most band photos are not usable in derivative works, so slapping brushes, textures and fonts on it, and using it as your header is against the law.

3. Using contrast between text and backgrounds.
If I can’t read your text, then I won’t. Light text on light backgrounds doesn’t work, and anybody that tries to tell you it does needs their heads checking. Those of us who have laptops suffer the most, I like my screen positioned straight up and usually I have to move it back to view some sites as they are too light, and use light fonts. Remember not everybody’s contrast is turned the same as yours. Additionally, there are many people surfing the internet with who are visually impaired and cannot see the lighter text.

Solution: Darken your fonts if your background is light.

4. Using small fonts.
The number of times I’ve closed a site in my browser today because the font is too small is loads. Sure, if I just want to read one thing, I can press ctrl and + but if I want to browse several pages pressing it every time I load a new window does my head in! Think of those with larger monitors and people out there with visual impairments and don’t ostracize us from visiting your site because you want a nice tiny weenie font.

Solution: Read up on using em measurements instead of pt or px, try viewing your site in a higher resolution if you can, to verify that it is readable, or simply increase the font size.

Remember: if people can’t read your site, they’ll just leave…!

5. Really thin columns.
A lot of web sites I have been looking at (usually the ones with celebrity headers, and tiny non-contrasting fonts) tend to opt for very thin columns to display their content in, with a bucket load of whitespace either side. To add insult to injury, it’s usually lacking any form of margin/padding, and the text is justified, so in theory you’re just reading one huge block of text.

Solution: Consider spacing, margin, padding and width of columns - don’t just plonk one tiny one in the middle of the page.

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  font, New, photos, stock, text, textures, traits, underlining