With over 150 million blogs online, becoming the next Verge, Elite Daily, or Gizmodo is more challenging as each day progresses. As a result, site owners are getting thirstier for as many likes, follows, and subscriptions as possible so that they can get to push their way through the muck of start-up blogs.
Unfortunately, this has resulted in the implementation of disruptive design techniques. Whether it is trying to get more likes, more page views or just trying to be ‘different’, most times they just end up annoying readers even more and discouraging them from visiting again.
Here are some of the most common trends on today’s websites that we hope will fade away quickly enough.
1) Pop-up boxes before you start reading
Imagine this. You’re scrolling through the news on your RSS Reader or Reddit and click through to a story. A few seconds after you start reading, the page goes dark and a pop-up box takes center stage asking for a Facebook like.
I didn’t come to your site to like your page; but rather, I came to actually read the article. If I decide to like your page, it’s going to be after I read the story, not before.
The same applies for those sites that black out the whole screen with an overlay in an attempt to get you to download their mobile app when you’re browsing on your phone. No, I just want to read the story.
2) Horizontal scroll website
We are all accustomed to sites that scroll vertically, but there are those few that have chosen to break away from this tradition with a more horizontal approach. This is a somewhat cool idea (for instance when showing a space distance timeline), but generally most horizontal sites are not properly coded and may look wonky when you’re on a tablet.
Horizontal sites work well with brands that showcase products for sale, but not so much for regularly updated blogs such as what was recently done over at Wired.co.uk.
3) Infinite scroll with a footer
More and more sites are adopting infinite scrolling home pages (i.e. sites that load similar to Facebook’s home page feed). I haven’t been a fan of this as finding old posts can sometimes be a pain, but it’s a thing. However, there are those designers that were smart enough to include their footer links at the bottom instead of to the top or the side. *sarcasm*
Whenever you try to scroll to the bottom, it’s impossible to click the link as new content keeps loading up and pushing those links further down. This is definitely not good news for those trying to get in contact with the site’s manager.
4) “Slideshows”
Ah yes, the infamous slideshow. The idea behind them is to encapsulate a number of related images into one viewing frame with back/forward viewing buttons versus having to click individual images and reloading the page. The problem is that 99% of these galleries are CRAP.
First, there are those JavaScript based galleries which take forever to load, and when they do, they break the website’s design 50% of the time and just stop working. As for mobile users, you guys are screwed because these galleries never seem to function correctly most of the time.
Then there are those ‘galleries’ a.k.a. posts split up into several pages with the intent of garnering more page views and more ad revenue. The whole concept stemmed from the days when extremely long articles were split into two pages to make it easier for readers to digest stories. Unfortunately a lot of sites today are splitting articles into multiple pages with just one point per page.
Whenever I come across these sites, I browse away immediately because I really don’t have the time to reload an entire webpage just to read two lines of text. BuzzFeed has always succeeded with their lists by including all their points on one page versus splitting them into multiple pages.
5) Interstitials
Interstitials are those ads that load up before you visit the actual website. You may have seen them on Business Insider, Gearburn or Forbes. Thankfully less and less sites are using this technique, as this method of advertising is pretty disruptive (just like modal pop ups), even if it’s just a random quote of the day.
Unfortunately interstitials are becoming even more popular on free mobile apps as developers are trying to show more and more ads to profit of the booming mobile market.
6) Every share button possible
Having a Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus button is fine, but there are those sites that insist of having every share button on the planet. While it may sound good in theory to have more options, there have been a few tests that prove that too many options may actually lead to decreased interactions.
If you’ve never heard of sites like Taboola, Outbrain, or Zergnet, maybe you’ve seen more prominent sites recommending articles such as “5 ways to lose belly fat” on a site that has nothing to do with health and fitness. These native advertising recommendation engines are the new thing as traditional banner advertising has taken a slight stab over the last few years.
I actually have no problem with recommendations from other sites, but most of the times I see crap like “How to make $5000 in 10 minutes” or “How to be a master at making love”. Ugh.
8) Autoplay videos
You’re on a site reading an article about what to get your mother for Christmas and out of nowhere you hear music or someone talking. Where is it coming from?! After panicking and trying to turn the volume down, eventually you discover that there’s an autoplay video somewhere in the sidebar (looking at you IB Times).
Videos are fine, but give us the choice to play them as we may sometimes be a in a situation where our speakers may be set to loud.
9) Ads everywhere
Ads are the bread and butter of most blogs but there are those few that insist on including 3-5 ads within the post’s content itself, making it almost impossible to distinguish the article’s content from the ad itself.
Yes, we all want to make a bit of extra money, but not at the cost of making the reading experience difficult.
Tell us what peeves you the most when visiting a website in the comments below. It would be great if GradeAUnderA could do a video about this!
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