FIRST IMPRESSION - BIG PICTURE

• We've designed our site to meet our organization's needs (more sales/contributions) rather than meeting the needs of our visitors.
• Our site tries to tell you how wonderful we are as a company, but not how we're going to solve your problems.
• It takes longer than four seconds for the man from Mars to understand what our site is about.
• The man from Mars cannot quickly find the focal point of the home page.
• The man from Mars cannot quickly find the focal point of the current page.
• Our site doesn't make us look like credible professionals.
• Our site doesn't make visitors feel they can trust us.
• Our home page — or any page — takes more than four seconds to load.
• Quickly scanning the page doesn't tell our visitors much about its purpose.
• We don 't put design elements where our visitors expect them.
• We have not eliminated unnecessary design items.
• We don't know which design items are not necessary.
• Our site breaks when visited with the Javascript turned off.
• Our site breaks because of back-end coding errors.
• We say "Welcome to..." on our home page.
• Our site is entirely Flash-based.
• Our site's navigation is Flash-based.
• Our site uses a splash page (unless it's a liquor, porn, gambling, adult, tobacco, or a multi-lingual / multinational site).
• Our site makes visitors register before they can enter.
• Our site uses two or more splash pages.
• Our site's TITLE tag is something like "New Document", "Index" and not the name of your company or other search-engine friendly terms.
• Our site has a sound file automatically play in the background when a web page loads, but we're not a record label or musician
• I don't know if our site looks the same in the major browsers.
• Our site doesn't look the same in different browsers.
• The important content does not fit in the first screen.
• Our pages have too much/too little white space.
• Our site uses pop-up windows.
• Our site forces visitors to install weird plugins.
• Our site has "Download latest browser" text or buttons.
• Our site prominently displays what hardware and software was used to create the site.
• Our site's design was "borrowed" from another site.
• Our site doesn't provide clear instructions on how to perform tasks like ordering, filling out forms, etc.
• Our site disables a visiors right-click mouse button because we're crazy enough to think we have content worth stealing and that our visitors are too stupid to figure out how to bypass our code.
• We don't identify PDF files with an icon.
• We don't analyze our log files.
• We never conduct user testing.

TEXT AND LINKS

• Our site mixes and matches text sizes on the page.
• Our site mixes text colors on the page.
• Our site's text requires people to have special fonts on their computers to correctly view our text.
• Visitors can't read our text because it's too small.
• Our SITE USES LOTS OF WORDS IN ALL-CAPS.
• Our site uses scrolling, blinking, fading, or moving text.
• There isn't enough contrast between text/links and the background.
• Our site uses centered text on more than just headlines.
• We use fully justified text.
• We use browser-specific tags like <MARQUEE>.
• Font faces are not appropriate for our audience — like Comic Sans on a senior citizen site.
• Our site has text in the status bar — moving Javascript text.
• We have too much/too little text on a page.
• Our site uses underlined text. (Only links should be underlined.)
• Our site has sideways text.
• Visited links don't change color.
• Our links are not clearly labeled.
• Our site has too many links in one area.
• Our site has too many links.
• Our site has lots of dead links.
• Our site has lots of complex URLs.
• Our site has links consisting of 10-20 words.
• Our links are not informative.

GRAPHICS, VIDEO, AUDIO

• Our logo does not look like it was professionally made.
• Our logo is a bad scan of a business card.
• Logo is not above the fold. (Yes, this does happen.)
• Logo is not on the top of every page and clicking it doesn't lead to the home page.
• If your site has banner ads (especially near the top of the page), keep graphics away from them. People tend to ignore ads and they'll ignore your graphics.
• Our site uses cheap clip art instead of high-quality web graphics.
• Our site uses divider bars.
• Our site uses large (file-size) graphics.
• Our site uses graphics that detract from the page.
• Our site automatically loads movies instead of using YouTube's method of only showing movies when people click.
• Our site uses "Under Construction" graphics.
• Our site doesn't physically reduce graphics using Photoshop (or other program). Instead, we take a 1200 x 800 pixel photo and manually changing the width and height attributes of the IMG tag to a smaller size.
• Our site uses graphics for text.
• Our site has an ugly color scheme (red and green, for example).
• Our sites' symbols are not logical. Our shopping cart symbol doesn't look like a shopping cart.
• Instead of calling it a shopping cart, we call it a basket or other silly term.
• Our site uses animations gratuitously.
• Our site uses animated GIFs. Animated GIFs can be used artfully.
• Our site uses 3-D graphics.
• Our site has flashing graphics that might cause seizures.
• Our site uses a background graphic that repeats itself on large-screen monitors.
• Our background graphic doesn't contrast well against the text, making it hard to read.
• Our graphics don't have ALT= attribute text filled in and doesn't use "" for graphics that are empty.
• Our site's graphics are confusing — they look like ads.
• Our site doesn't use color to convey meaning — red text signifies "this is important."
• No one has spent the time figuring out if our color scheme alienates our international users.
• Our site has multiple colored areas on the page.
• Our site has blocks of ugly colors next to each other (red next to green).
• Each page on our site is one big imagemap.
• Our site has graphics that suffer from the "halo effect" — dithering that leaves an ugly halo around the image.

NAVIGATION

• We created our site's navigational system to meet our needs, not our visitors' needs.
• We understand how our site's navigation works so everybody else understands how it works.
• We have a page or a popup explains how our navigation works.
• A site's navigation should tell you where you are, where you're going to go, and how to get back to the home page. Our site's navigation doesn't.
• Our site uses Flash navigation.
• A man from Mars could not quickly understand our site's navigation.
• Our site uses JavaScript for navigation and it doesn't degrade naturally for visitors who come with JavaScript turned off.
• Our site uses sideways navigation.
• We use stupid terms like "stuff" for our navigational links or "Beginning" for "Home."
• Our site doesn't have shortcuts on the main page to the popular content.
• Our site's navigation is not in the top screen.
• Instead of being predictable, our site's navigation is inconsistent.
• Instead of being predictable, our site's navigational placement is inconsistent from page to page.
• Our site's content is not divided into logical categories and subcategories.
• The names of the categories and subcategories are not clear and mutually exclusive on our site.
• Our links aren't clearly labeled and don't tell you where you'll end up.
• Our links aren't clearly labeled, don't tell you where you'll end up, and say "Click Here."
• Some/all of our pages require visitors to scroll horizontally.
• Our site uses Java navigation.
• Navigation graphics are not the same size and/or color.
• On our site, you may have to click four or more times to get to the information you want.

CONTENT

• Our content is not organized to meet our visitors' needs.
• Our content is not broken down into logical categories.
• The content is not understandable by humans and is full of marketing-speak, or jargon, or unexplained acronyms.
• The content is not engaging, or relevant, or accurate, or fair and impartial.
• I don't know if our content is appropriate for our audience.
• We don't identify non-HTML documents like PowerPoint or Excel
• Our site's content is not written for the web, but for print media (or other media) and we just transferred it to the web.
• Our site's content is written at a higher or lower readability level than our visitors' knowledge level.
• Our pages are too long. We forget that people skim.
• Some of our site's content — graphics and/or text — is considered offensive.
• Some of our content — graphics and/or text is considered racially or politically incorrect.
• Some of our content — graphics and/or text — is considered offensive to international audiences.
• We didn't hire editor to proofread spelling, grammar, capitalization and content.
• We haven't checked to see we've eliminated all "Lorem ipsum" text or other placeholder text and graphics from site — especially from document titles.
• Our site uses content that our visitors don't need to know.
• Our site may contain sensitive information the public and/or competitors shouldn't see.
• Our site has a mission statement or a link to a mission statement on the front page (non-profit's are exempt).
• Our site has sections that are under construction and the public can access them.
• Our site has different looks on different pages or sections.
• Our site's content came from Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, etc., documents and then converted to HTML.
• Our site has outdated calendar information.
• Our site has too many words on a line, making it hard to read.
• Our site has too few words on a line, making it frustrating to read.