Pros & Cons in Web Design
 
2. Long Lists of Buttons
Lots of buttons are down-right ugly, but they are easy to find and help your site's ranking with search engines. Break them up into different sections. The least important buttons should appear as hyperlinks at the bottom of the web page.
2. Lots of Images V. No Images
People looking at a web page will say that they are drawn first to the images, but images are large and can dramatically increase the size of your site. Optimize and crop your images to decrease file sizes and use them wisely.
3. Flash Websites
Flash websites have the bling factor but they take a long time to load and are not as easily seen by search engines. Use an HTML site with a bit of flash for a happy medium.
4. Using Images for Text
The words that appear in images aren't searchable by search engines but they will always appear just as you designed them. Use them sparingly, and asign an image tag for optimization.
5. Large Designed Backgrounds
The smallest kind of background is a solid color while large images in the background slow down your site. A compromise would be an image that is less than 5 pixels wide and repeatable.
6. Long Articles
The more words that appear on your site, the better the search engine optimization you will have. The only problem is that users bombarted with a lot of text tend to leave a site. Break up the information into readable chunks.
7. Linking to Other Websites
Putting links on your website will help your site's SEO, but you don't want people to leave your site for another. The best thing to do is open the other site in a new window and hope that your visitor will return after closing the new window.
8. Listing Contact Information
It's a dangerous world but we have to do business. When listing your contact information, don't use personal phone numbers and type out the @ symbol so your email address can't be harvested for spamming.
9. Drop-down Menus
A great way to organize a navigation system is to utilize drop-down menus, but there are two downfalls. Some users never roll over the first level of buttons and others haven't updated their Javascript so the buttons won't work for them.
10. Logo as Home Button
Click on a logo in the top left corner of a site and you are probably going to be directed to the home page. Even though it seems to have become conventional, some users still don't know this.