How Not to Build a Website
by Rhonda Serong, Webmistress
Otakou New
Zealand Online
3 July 2000
So, we have built ourselves a website! Great — now it's time to get all the guests and Awards! We have a fantastic website, a real world-beater. All our friends say it is, and even we believe it's rather "cool."
Our prized website has all the bells and whistles, the very latest in Java and JavaScript, and state of the art animations flashing here, there and everywhere. There's also music to soothe our visitors. Sounds rather good, don’t you think?
Entrance Junk
We crammed the entrance page and other pages with as much info, clutter, animations and other useless non-related garbage as we could. Visitors are waiting an age for the entrance page to load and by the time it's even half loaded, they're gone — never to return. But isn’t it quantity people seek? Well, we're giving it to them.
Site Rainbows
We made certain that every page is different in the areas of fonts, text colors (you know the type of text where each letter or every second paragraph is a different color and/or font type), backgrounds and so on. We provided no consistency in any site areas, including the positioning of links and page styles. In fact, it appears as though no two pages belong in the same site.
We often wonder if our guests are as confused as we are when we visit our own website. We puzzle over why that darn hit counter doesn’t work correctly? It looks like the Counter people have mucked up again!
Image Heaven
We really love images! The more the merrier, especially heaps of state of the art animations that flash and blink all over the pages (you know, the ones that instantly destroy your concentration). A pity most of them are over 50K each! And photos — at least three huge ones on each page. Our family and pet photos came in handy here. We've got to give guests something to look at, right?
Banners and buttons aplenty as well — all slowing down loading time and linked so that when OUR guests click on them they take flight heading off somewhere else and can’t get back to where they originally were at our website.
Typos – But We KNOW How to Spell!
We like to make our point so we used upper case all over the place and have grammatical and typo errors glaring everywhere. That will make the website stand out for sure. Who wants to be the same as everyone else anyway? We are, after all, amateurs at this game and people will understand.
Sailing the Ship
Java — there must be a Java navigation system. And not just simple commonly seen Java either, but really top rate techno stuff where everything works on timers and the navigation system at the top also controls a banner section at the bottom as well as the music controls at the right hand side of the pages. Well, okay. So the music controls don’t always work but no one is perfect, right?
Confused? No more than we are — but we have to keep all that stuff fine-tuned and functioning correctly even when we really don't know what we're doing. But our site will impress Award givers and guests. They will appreciate all our efforts, of that there is no doubt.
The fact that guests are unable to find their way through the site easily is not a factor to consider. Let’s just show the world how clever we are. Any and all errors are due to the site being under construction and guests will understand and be considerate. We are professional. We'll tell guests that site work is ongoing. They're all patient reasonable people and, after all, it is the right thing to do. So we throw in the "Under Construction" signs.
Reality Strikes
Now hang on a minute! We get Awards from a few givers and our heads swell a lot as we sit back dreaming about the superb website we have built. But wait for it — the big "crash on the downside" is about to appear from just around the corner.
We apply for top rated Awards and our fantasy world comes tumbling down. Our website is successful — in driving Award givers and even our guests away by the multitude, so we surely achieved something. And it really didn’t take much of an effort either! All we have to do is be stubborn, inconsiderate, filled with false pride, and arrogant, and we are on our way to disaster.
Don’t think all the above is a "fairy tale," for it is all fact. I thought my website was just so brilliant and no one could have had a bigger ego. The website consisted of all the things that Award givers and guests don’t like and although some Awards flew into the mailbox, there was never any personal satisfaction with the site. Perhaps my inner self was telling me something that I really did not want to hear.
Then came the day when I applied to one of the better-known Award programs. Although they were kind and very nice to me, the website was basically dumped. Contacting the Award giver to seek advice was the best thing I have ever done, for what I learned and am still learning will hold me in good stead for the rest of my life.
What I Learned
What should we be doing to keep our visitors coming and to increase our Award chances? Here's what I learned the hard way:
| 
