As a website designer or in working with your web site designer, you should design your website to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell your products or services because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I'm talking about a "good design," I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional website designer will be able to point out that there are many components or 'web design elements' which contribute to a good website design -- intuitive & easy navigation often termed accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst website designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

A HUGE No-No. Unless you are running a website which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your website. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on slow connection or dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to website design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything! Having to many different font types also makes a web site look messy.

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct everytime each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your web site does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

4) Unfamiliar Navigation

All different kinds of people of all ages and skill levels will come to visit your web site as the Internet is a "global" marketplace. Using a type of website navigation that looks drastically different then what your users are used to seeing on the Internet will confuse them and chase them away.  You want your navigation to be recognizable at a glance.  You don't want your users poking around the page trying to figure out how to get around your website when you want them thinking about your product or services. Incorporate a system of navigation that your users are used to seeing on the NET. Left column vertical navigation, right column vertical navigation or horizontal navigation near the top of the page is what most users are used to seeing.

5) Distracting Animated Flash Elements or GIFS

A little bit of animation can go a long way in attracting the attention of a web site user to things you want them to notice. But to much of a good thing will distract them while they are digging deep into your content.

6) In conclusion

When your thinking about what to incorporate into your design it's not about what YOU want, it's about what your users need.  I have had some people come to me with some incredible almost fantasy ideas of what they would like to see for a website.  These things may add a lot of "WOW" factor when they first arrive but their usefullness fades in about 15 seconds and has little value in converting your web surfer into a transaction.  Keep it somple and remember - "content is KING!"