"Top Ten Web Design Mistakes" lists

I recently read the article "Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005" by Jakob Nielsen and it gave me some helpful ideas about what to do when I start creating my own webpage. Nielsen laid out the ten most irritating usability issues for users of the Web, according to readers of his newsletter. Most of the items that he listed were things that have frustrated me in the past, as well, but there were a few things that I am going to make a mental note of so that I don't do those things when I get my own site up and running.

One thing that I definitely need to get better at is making sure that the links that I insert are clear and easy to find. I've been keeping a personal blog for about a year, and one thing that I do a lot is to hide links within text rather than making it clear about where the reader needs to click in order to access the link. I also want to remember to put some contact information on my page because I have visited a lot of sites where, when I've tried to contact the publisher of the site, I've gotten e-mails returned to me as undeliverable because the e-mail address was entered incorrectly or is out of date. I also want to make sure that any photos that I include are available for enlargement.

I got some more ideas about what not to do on my website by viewing Nielsen's 2004 version of "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design". This list reminded me that it's important to title my web page so that it is located by search engines and that pages that are linked from my main page should have titles that give information about what will be found on the page so that it is easy for users to use their Back button to locate the page they are interested in. The 2004 list also reminded me that it's important to make sure that visited links are made a different color than unvisited links so that users know which links they've looked at and which contain new material.