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Unnecessarily complicated web design is frustrating. Picture a great artist with great ideas for paintings. What difference does it make if he has no ability to paint? Being creative just isn’t good enough. Everybody has an imagination, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find somebody that has never gone to sleep and dreamed about something that never actually happened. Having an imagination doesn’t make you an artist; it just makes you human. To be an artist, you have to have the skills to use tools as well as the ability to interpret what constitutes legitimate quality.

What constitutes a great website is subjective. Some people like certain web styles and other people like others, but that’s not what this post is about. All too often in web development, both website owners and web developers have a desire to be unique and a desire to show off. This is a bad combination that often results in a crappy user experience. Rather than over generalize, I’m going to critique two pet peeves of mine that I see too often.

Pet Peeve #1: The Slider that Serves No Purpose

There are just too many sliders on websites nowadays. I was just using a website the other day that had a series of articles grouped by subject all on the same page. Good idea. But as I scrolled down, I noticed that each subject only had three articles or less attached to them, then I took a closer look and noticed that some of the subjects had an arrow to the right of them that was pointing off screen. So I clicked on one a few times and found a couple of articles I wanted to read. I read one then clicked the back button.

When it took me back to the previous page, the slider had reset, so I had to click through it again to find the other article. Annoying. Then I got to the second article, and there was an image slider at the bottom that was set to automatically slide. I saw an image I wanted to study, but when I clicked on it, it only stopped for a moment then kept on sliding. Really annoying. I mentioned it to my wife who had told me about the page, and she said, “Oh, I didn’t see the arrow. I didn’t realize there were more articles that you could scroll through.”

What’s the point of all this? If the image and articles had just been set left to right and top to bottom, the pages would have been a lot easier to build and a lot easier to use. Who’s the winner with these ideas? This is unnecessarily complicated web design

Pet Peeve #2: Query Result Extenders with Too Many Results

Can you picture searching for something on Google then reaching the bottom of the page then seeing a button that reads something like, “More Results”. Actually, they do this on their mobile version of their search engine which is a feature I don’t love. But they don’t do it on their large screen search engines, and my guess is that their reason is it wouldn’t be functional. Have you ever had a list of search results that you have looked through more than once? And you don’t want to look through every page; you just want to jump ahead a few pages forward. My guess is Google realizes that which is why they offer paginated results.

On a couple of occasions, I can remember reading blogs where I was looking through a series of results and finding multiple articles that interested me, but I can also remember getting fed up and not bothering to read all of the articles because whenever I clicked back to the results page, instead of being able to click to an exact page with an article link, I had to click the “load more” button over and over again to try to get it to spit out the link I was looking for.

The Bottom Line About Unnecessarily Complicated Web Design

This isn’t a rant against all sliders and result extenders. They have appropriate uses. But they shouldn’t be used just because you think they look cool and you’re technically capable enough to implement them. And this is true of all features that can be cool under the right circumstances.

Being creative and unique is not a virtue unto itself, and neither is technical aptitude. The most important element is creating a fluid user experience that gets users what they’re looking for. Your website isn’t really about your website. It’s about your website’s content. Your website’s job is to aid people in reaching your content, not get in the way. At a certain point during the website development process, a conflict between presentation and accessibility will emerge, and it is usually best to avoid significant compromises to accessibility for the sake of presentation.

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When you create a website, one size never fits all. You always have to consider screen size and you always have to consider how different browsers will interpret your website’s code. But there is no way around it. Some browsers just plain damn suck. But you still have to consider browser performance.

Before you decide whether or not it’s the browser’s fault or your site’s fault, you need to make sure that you understand how browsers interpret information. Almost every browser does something unique. And mobile browsers tend to make considerable distinctions in how they interpret information as compared to laptop and desktop browsers.

But even if you have given consideration to all those unique concerns, you still may find that your site just doesn’t run well on some browsers. A good rule of thumb is if you can (and frequently have to) hit the refresh button to get your site running properly, then it is safe to consider the problem as being exclusive to the browser and/or the operating system, and it is unlikely that any amount of coding wizardry will solve your problem.

So What Do You Do Next About Browser Performance?

The simplest and most conservative thing to do is to just dumb your site down. Whatever isn’t running well, you can just remove it. If the problem is on a major browser, you might have to use this option. But more than likely, the issue is the problem is on a more obscure browser.

You could write an exception into your program. It is generally not a great idea to try write exceptions based on specific browsers. But you can write exceptions based on screen size or browser behavior. But what if the exception casts too wide a net? Or what if the exception simply doesn’t solve the problem? And what if removing the problem-causing feature requires you to substantially deteriorate the performance of your site for most users for a problem that is rare?

Well, then you have to ask yourself, how rare is it? And how much longer will it last? Bad browsers tend to cause problems on many sites, and users get sick of using them.

If you are finding that hitting refresh gets your site running properly, than it may mean that your site is a little advanced for the browser or operating system that you’re using. Which means that it’s probably a piece of technology that fewer and fewer people are using, and you might just want to let its poor performance slide.

If your website is any good, it probably isn’t that hard to find a browser that is older and more obscure and runs your site like crap. The only remaining question is, is the browser old enough and obscure enough that you can stop worrying about it?

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As a WordPress Developer, I often find myself running into the challenge of improving one my own websites and realizing how much faster I can import code directly into my site in comparison to adding customization options to the theme that I am using to run my website. I actually recently published a new page about this on my Big Bob theme demo site.

When thinking about developing a website, there are quite a few different choices you have at your disposal. You can break these choices down into a myriad of categories. But at the risk of oversimplification, I’m going to break the development styles down into just three categories:

1. Static
2. Hybrid
3. Website Builder

Static

A traditional static site is a site where you just write your code and run the pages. If you want to make an update to your site, then you need to make your change directly into the code. Unlike the models I will reference below, developers have a maximum amount control, if they know what they’re doing. They don’t have to worry about being encumbered or having to compromise for any preexisting structures because they are in charge of building the site from the first line of code.

However, a major drawback is updating the content of the site. Every single character of content has to be updated by someone who is capable of writing code.

Hybrid

When I say hybrid site, I am generally referring to platforms like WordPress that are driven by a CMS (Content Management Service). The main benefit of using a platform like this is you can push out a new page of brand new content really fast. However, you are required to work within the parameters of WordPress’s core capabilities and the theme and plugins you are using.

As a developer, I have to consider two issues whenever I update a theme. The first thing I have to do is consider the technical requirements needed for the update which is generally more complicated than a static site. And the second thing I have to consider is user impact.

When I make an update for a theme, I have to consider the use cases of every potential user. I don’t want to do anything that might break something the user has already done with my theme, and I don’t want to make my theme too complicated to use.

Bearing the above in mind, you should be careful about what theme and plugins you choose and how many plugins you use. It’s easy to take a bunch of WordPress software and turn it into a bloated pseudo website builder that runs like crap.

Website Builder

Some themes and plugins give users so many options that they market themselves as website builders. Some people have made the assertion that this is the future of web design. However, I’m a bit more skeptical.

Website builders have been around since the 90’s. They were commonly referred to as WSIWYG (pronounced Wizzy Wig). It means What You See Is What You Get. Marketed on the idea that users could simply use their creativity rather than technical skills, the reality was that they relied on a user interface that required its own level of learning, and they tended to suffer from code bloat which increased the probability that the site would run slow and become buggy. Like the WSIWYG, today’s new website builders are often criticized for the same problems.

My Interpretations

Any choice you make is going to require you to deal with problems.

If you’re looking to create a site with a specific look that you aren’t going to need to update very often, then I would save up some money and get yourself a static site built by a reputable developer. There are also static templates, so you can usually save yourself some money by picking one out then having a developer make modifications to fit your custom needs.

If you need a site that you are going to update on a regular basis, and you don’t want to have to rely on a developer to make the updates, then you should choose a hybrid model.

A hybrid model can also be a good option if you just need to set up a decent website fast and cheap. There are free themes available (like the Big Bob theme), and if you reach a point where you like the theme, but you’d like a few custom options just for your site, then you can usually contact the theme’s developer and he/she can set those up for you.

I will concede that website builders are pretty cheap. The catch is there is a significant learning curve, and you will still be limited in your options in comparison to working with a web developer. Also, if as soon as your site starts to generate decent traffic, it starts to sputter and chug and come apart on you, then don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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