As 2007 is drawing to a close, some of today’s website owners are stuck in the stone-age with their website designs. Whether it’s the all-flash, all the time websites or websites that focus so much on graphic-heavy, “pretty” designs that usability of the website looks like it was all but forgotten about during the websites development process; today’s maturing internet users are getting more savvy, and many are at the point that they realize there are choices when it comes to finding the information and resources that they’re looking for.

Because today’s internet user base understands that there are choices, these user unfriendly website will inevitably need to re-vamp their hard to access designs or will eventually die out in order to make way for the World Wide Web properties that offer a welcoming, and usable, interface for today’s internet users.

What constitutes an unfriendly website?

In the simplest form, a user unfriendly website is one that causes irritation, inconvenience, confusion or denies access for the website visitor. There are many potentially fatal flaws that can hinder a website visitors use of a website and depreciate the value of a website incorporating these unfriendly designs from a visitor’s standpoint:

All Flash Websites: Flash is “pretty” and certainly can add an element of professionalism to a website. However, if a website user is using an antiquated web-browser that doesn’t know how to handle flash, or users don’t have the proper plugins installed; all flash websites will be completely unusable by a certain percentage of internet users.

“Heavy” graphics and pre-loading media: Even though broadband internet has become more affordable and is widely available in most, if not all, of the industrialized nations on this planet; not all users are able to load large background images or 3 Megabyte streaming video files easily. It’s stated that users are generally willing to wait 8 seconds for a web page to load; if the main access pages of a website require several hundred kilobytes or more of data to be transferred in order for a user to access the pages, these website owners are essentially prohibiting a percentage of worldwide internet users from accessing their websites.

“Fixed” approach to layout and text-size: Fixed-width layouts for website design can cause issues for website visitors with differing screen resolutions. Using this model can cause an exorbitant amount of “whitespace” for users with large computer screen display dimensions, and can break the design for the few users still using the 600x800 screen resolution or smaller. When text on a website is limited by a fixed-width, the design prohibits visitors to resize it in order to suit their needs for comfortable reading.

Poor Navigation and forced browsing actions: When a visitor lands on a website, they want to be able to find what they are looking for at the speed that is comfortable for them; they don’t want to have to scroll down or search to find the navigation menu, and they want links and buttons to react in the way that they intend them to. For instance, forcing a user to open a link in a new window may suit a website owner’s purpose, but it can be a major annoyance to a website visitor. Visitors that get annoyed by a website, whether it’s because they cannot navigate it or because clicking on links causes pop-ups or a new window to open, may very well decide to go elsewhere to find what they’re looking for based on these issues alone.

Now, this certainly is a small list of unfriendly traits that today’s websites still use, but they’re among the most problematic when it comes to a user-friendly experience on a website. Something that is commonly said amongst website owners and even web designers is that basically the user needs to upgrade their equipment or change their habits so that they can access a website; this is an arrogant train of thought and is potentially dangerous.

It’s just the same with brick and mortar businesses: it’s the business owners’ responsibility to be sure that their store is accessible for the public; it’s not the consumers’ responsibility to change who they are or what they do in order to access the store. In fact, to take this one step further: by creating a website that is inaccessible for certain internet users, a website operator could be setting themselves up for legal ramifications as well.

Earlier this year, a user of the Target website launched a lawsuit against the company for failure to provide access for blind internet users (http://hr.cch.com/news/employment/101907a.asp). While this may seem ridiculous, it further solidifies the point of that creating a user-friendly and accessible interface for website users is imperative this day in age.

While the lawsuit against Target is an extreme case and is obviously not happening on a large-scale considering the plethora of inaccessible and user unfriendly websites on the ‘net today, it doesn’t detract from the fact that user usability of a website is important. It’s only when website owners and web developers start to weigh the usability of a website as important, or even more important, than the website design itself, that the unfriendly designs and inability to access certain website for certain users will go away.

Now, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, but you can do something about your website. Find an inexperienced internet user; maybe a friend, a friends’ spouse, a co-worker, etc. Let them browse around your website and listen to their feedback. While their experience may differ from others’, it’s a start in the right direction. The bottom line is this: by providing a user friendly website you’re not only helping your website’s current and future visitors, in the long run you’ll be helping yourself as well.