1. Disabling Right-Click

Many people are afraid to publish content online, and rightfully so. There are plenty of visitors who will come to your website and steal content. However, disabling the right-click on a mouse, while it may seem like a quick solution, creates usability issues and ultimately does not solve the problem at hand.

If someone wants your content, they will get it. If a website has disabled the right click of a mouse, the user still has many ways they can get that content. If they would like to take an image, they may simply take a screenshot of the page. If they are on a Mac, taking an image is as simple as drag-and-drop. If they really like your textual content that much, they will just retype it by hand.

There are many other things you are preventing when you disable right-clicking on a mouse, and most of them will irritate web site visitors. Many people will right-click a link to open it in a new window or tab, or right click to click on “back” to go back to the previous page. If the usability of your site frustrates your visitors, they won’t be likely to return.

2. Using Images from Google Images Without Finding Out Their Copyright

This goes for using images that come up in any search results. Even in Flickr. Make sure you check the Creative Commons license to ensure that the author allows the image to be used in the way you intend to use it.

If you’ve found an image on Google, always make sure you know what your rights are to the image. In most cases, someone else has licensed that image for their use alone, so taking an image off of their site is infringing upon a license of use and violating copyright. A website does not need to list copyright information for its content to be copyrighted!

Here’s a great article about finding and using photos from Flickr.

3. Copying Someone Else’s Design

This is a great way to cause your business to fail. Someone will find out about it, and you’ll either be asked to change it or may receive a Takedown notice. Of course, there are also some who may just take you straight to court. In many cases, though, designers and other companies will not be too happy that you used their design, and they will probably let others know about it. Expect your name to be dragged through the dirt, and forget about anything you may have established.

If you really like a design, ask your designer to take inspiration from it and use a similar aesthetic. But never, ever ask them to copy it. If you have found out that your designer has copied a design without your knowledge, you should immediately fire them and take action to change your design as soon as possible.

4. Navigation That Doesn’t Make Sense

If your navigation doesn’t make sense or is difficult to decipher, your visitor will leave. People come to your website to get information, and get it fast. If the way your site is designed is slowing them down or making them unable to do that, they will find a competitor’s site that doesn’t. Users are becoming more and more adept at finding their way around the internet, and they don’t have the patience to figure out why and how your site works differently than others.

Make sure your navigation is obvious, and take the time to organize it so that it makes sense and everything is easy to find in an appropriate hierarchy. Your web designer will be able to help you with this (and in many cases, should help you with this) if you have troubles. If you provide the pages that you need to have on your website and describe each page, your web designer should be able to help create a flow chart demonstrating a navigation that makes sense.

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While there are many more things than this that can be an indication of a bad designer, I’ve tried to stick with things that are easy to recognize by clients, and not so much things that could be considered subjective. Dealing with design and what is good and bad can be very personal, and also relative to specific projects. So we’ll just be discussing objective skills and practices.

1. No Questionnaire or Q&A Process

I’ve spoken about how important this is briefly in other articles, but it really is one of the most important parts of the design process. There are vital questions that a designer must ask before they can begin to create anything that would be remotely successful. Even questions as simple as finding out your target audience and actions you want your visitors to take upon reaching your site. They should also be concerned with your brand and retaining the image you’ve already established. Check out our questionnaire walkthrough for an example of the questions that we ask.

If the designer you are considering does not have a questions and answers period, they are apparently not concerned with giving you relevant and successful results.

2. Awards Before Solutions

A good web designer’s sole purpose is to deliver solutions to their clients: Solving a problem like more sales, better business, or more phone calls. However, many designer’s sites advertise the awards they have won for their designs instead of talking about the solutions they provide to their clients.

While awards and being published are great prestige and a great way to tell if someone is good at making pretty things, pretty doesn’t always mean effective, and unfortunately, in a lot of cases it’s quite the opposite. A lot of designers whose main concern is to design something to win an award do not take the client’s or project’s needs into consideration.

At Camp Creative Group, we do each project completely for our clients and their specific needs. If, after the project is finished, we think it will be award-worthy or should be published, then we submit it. In fact, many of the projects we have submitted have been chosen to be published solely because they were excellent examples of designing for a target audience.

3. Everything in Their Portfolio Looks the Same

I don’t really feel like I’ve ever seen an exception to this rule (however, I am open to suggestions). As a client, you should look for a designer who is diverse in their design. This will mean that they will be better able to design something specific and relevant to your project.

Even if you are looking for a designer for something specific… Say you’re a construction company and you want to work with someone who works only with other construction companies. While the benefits to working with someone who understands your company inside and out are great, be wary if all the designs in their portfolio look the same. You don’t want your site to look like other companies in your genre – you want your site to stand out and be effective. Chances are, if they haven’t swayed yet, they won’t with your project.

4. Uses Templates

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if someone uses templates, so this one is a little bit difficult to notice for the untrained eye (although it could be a good reason for #3 above). However, if the design just doesn’t look quite right for the content, or if colors look a little awkward, there is probably a good chance they have used a template design. I’ve even seen “designers” who use a template for their own website.

Some companies will be open about the fact that they use a template, they may even let you pick one out. Some, underhandedly, may not tell you at all and just use one instead of designing a site.

To have a truly successful site for your business, you will want to hire someone to design something to meet your company’s needs. Templates will never be able to solve problems because they were designed to solve someone else’s problems. Besides that, do you really want a website that hundreds and thousands of other unsuccessful companies have?

5. Bad Markup

Right click on the site you are on and select “View Source.” If there are lots of table “<td></td><tr></tr>” and font “<font>” tags, their coding is most likely outdated.

There are several reasons to use better markup. One being accessibility, another is that it greatly benefits SEO (however, it does not necessarily mean you will need that alone).

One of the best reasons is that when you separate your content from your design, it makes it so much easier to make changes to the design in the future. Which means that when you want to redesign later (the average website design lasts about 3 years) it will be most cost effective.

6. Your Browser’s Back Button Doesn’t Work While On Their Site

This means they’ve either disabled your back button, opened a new window, or built their website entirely in Flash (without taking necessary actions to make it work correctly). All of these things are done without consideration for usability. The back button exists for a purpose. Users need to be able to use it. If they have no consideration for users of their own website, they most likely won’t have any consideration for your website’s users.

7. You Can’t Figure Out Their Navigation

Or, it takes you a while to figure out their navigation. Navigation should be obvious. Period. There is no point to having it at all if it’s not. Users will leave your site if they can’t figure out how to get to the information that they need. There is no excuse for a designer’s website to be any different. They are trying to sell their service to you, which means you’re their target audience. If they can’t design something for their own target audience, how can you expect them to design something for yours?

8. No Biography, No Picture

The web can be a very impersonal place, but it is becoming very personal. With social media dominating, people want interactions. They want to know more about the company they will be working with and the key team members in that company. They want to see a smiling, friendly face. Most people want to decide who to work with based on the biography and picture they provide. When doing business on the web this is extremely important because normally there is not going to be any other way to invoke trust.

If someone doesn’t provide a biography or picture, I often wonder “what are they hiding.” I also wonder this when someone provides outdated “elementary school pictures” without providing at the very least a rollover change to a current picture. Instantly, I feel like I am unsure if I can trust them.

9. Banner Ads For Other Companies

While this isn’t always the case, most of the times I have stumbled upon a “web design” company’s website that has banner ads throughout it for other companies (or, worse yet, google ads), they have been hacks. Whether it is for something relevant, such as hosting, or something irrelevant. The main purpose of their site should be to sell their services. Ads on their site just show they are trying to get every little penny they can get – which shows a great deal of concern about making money and not delivering solutions.

Of course, if they have a specific hosting company that they recommend, it doesn’t mean they can’t have their affiliate banner where appropriate. However, most of the time this isn’t the case and the banners will be for several companies, and scattered throughout. The worst culprits are the ones that put put a huge horizontal banner ad right beside their own logo.

10. Splash Page

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only place where a splash page is appropriate is on a website where you need to confirm your user’s age before they enter, or when they need to select a language. Even having an introductory video or animation is okay, but put it on the home page of your site with supporting content. If your designer doesn’t follow this rule, they are using completely outdated practices and it should be a big flag that they might not be able to give you the best advice and deliver results that will work for you.

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