Irritating Things on Websites

What irritates you the most?

[PCInk]

There are websites out there that have irritations, some which are quite modern. What are your most irritating things that webmasters should avoid?

Pages that pop-up a box asking you to like them on social media or to take a survey about their site on the first page you look at annoy me. Why would I like you on Facebook when I haven't even been able to see your any pages on the site yet?

What annoys you the most?

[zeus]

popup that says Like us and music playing

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

You click a link to a video and have to watch an ad about something you have no interest in for 30 seconds before it starts. (I never wait.)

[ken_b]

Autoplay AV

[engine]

Agreed with what's been said.
I'd also add the annoying cookie compliance message introduced by politicians in Europe.

I don't mind interstitials so much as the most annoying "subscribe" popup.

[buckworks]

My biggest annoyance?

Promotions for events that are over. The absolute worst is prominent promotion for discounts or special offers that are no longer valid!

[jimbeetle]

--Any roadblock. I can't understand why the old popup windows were bad but now the new, more intrusive html popups are supposedly good.

--Autoplay anything, but especially with volume control disabled

--"There are x new comments" popup. Why do I need to know that before I even start to read your article.

--"You might also be interested in" popup as I scroll down the page. I guess you would rather distract me than have me finish reading your article.

--Auto refresh while I'm reading an article. Don't know of a more effective way to get me not to finish it.

--Do I really see a scrolling twitter feed from the past 12 hours. Yeah, go ahead, distract me some more, now I guess I really don't have to finish your article.

[tangor]

For me it is odd font size/colors and busy backgrounds.... I came to read, not view "art"!

[zeus]

I never had anything against popunders, as long its not more then 1

[tbear]

All of the above, plus:
1/ Hiding the 'sign out' link beneath a pop out list, á la, Gurgle, Yahoop, Hurtmail, et cetera. Whatever happened to function over form?
2/ Sites that don't function fully using Opera, such as my bank!
3/ What, no mention of Flash? Flash 'splash' pages.
4/ SE news pages that give me links to subscription only newspapers.......

[Samizdata]

pages that give me links to subscription only newspapers

Links to the Facebook signup page.

...

[Swanny007]

1. Interstitial ads
2. Audio that starts playing when the page loads
3. Signup only available through Google or Facebook accounts
4. Popunder ads
5. Thin content

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This could develop into a thread on how to design good websites? :)

[tbear]

Although, there's not much in the list that is new.... :(

[lucy24]

Everyone forgot:
Sites that assume your monitor is 2000px wide-- and you're using all of it for the browser.

Does anyone in the world actively like sites that play music unasked? Someone must, or there wouldn't be so many sites that do it.

As a user of a less-common browser I'm also riled by sites that use unconditional UA detection to withhold content from me. I don't mind a preliminary message saying "Our site may not work on your browser but you're welcome to try."

I counted up recently and found that my front page (only) uses six fonts. But not for body text.

[Mr Bo Jangles]

20 years on, we still have heaps of sites (many in the US are major offenders)that:
a) attempt to gather your address details in form fields, but only offer fields that suit US addresses
b) attempt to accept your phone number, but the syntax they want only suits a US phone number,and they offer no guidance.

Hopless....

[PCInk]

One I was thinking of that is modern is pages that move content after the page has loaded. Sometimes this is done by Ajax inserting something else towards the top of the page, moving the page below it around. Especially annoying when you are about to click a link and suddenly it moves.

[engine]

>inserting something else towards the top of the page,

I have noticed a number of online journals doing that, and when reading an article it's incredibly frustrating. It means i'm having to scroll the first time the ad appears, then having to re-scroll when the ad mysteriously contracts. The stupid thing about that is the ad is usually at the top, and i'm already some way down, so i rarely see the actual ad.

[tbear]

This always happened with images without size info. Now it's worse.....

[AnonyMouse]

Sites that redirect me to a language preference that I haven't expressed! Just because I'm in Spain, don't assume I want to see a Spanish version of your site please!

[tbear]

Ditto that, too, AnonyMouse! I'm also in Spain....

[graeme_p]

The language preference redirects are getting very annoying. Google Drive does it if someone sends you a link to a document on their site (at least if you are not logged in).

The EU cookie law is very annoying as it means you have to now allow cookies so the site can record your cookie preferences. No more white-listing of sites allowed to set cookies.

[wruppert]

Very small gray type on a slightly lighter gray background, and ctrl<+> does not work. Thank heavens for Readability.

[glitterball]

Agree with the sentiments against both the annoying EU cookie messages and language redirections.

[EditorialGuy]

1) Thin content (often lifted from other sources and regurgitated by writers who know nothing about the topic)

2) Popups of any kind

3) Interstitial ads

4) Too many elements crammed onto the page

5) Tiny sans-serif fonts

6) Hyperbolic headlines

7) No links to original, official, or useful resources

[crobb305]

Websites that present a "top 10" list in the form of a silly slideshow. Some mainstream news websites are especially bad about this. Just give me the list. Or at the very least, structure the page so it doesn't bounce around while it's loading (as the user clicks the arrow on the slide to go to the next item in the list)... it causes the user to inadvertently click on other links/ads if the full page isn't fully loaded before trying to click the arrow (or, even worse, the images that are used for the slides vary in size such that the prev/next arrows aren't in the same position on all pages). Drives me nuts.

[Solution1]

Ajax driven multi page lists. When you click the "Next" button to go to the next page, the (alphabetical) list doesn't get focussed at the top, as would make the most sense, but at the bottom.

When nearing the end of an article, getting some recommendation for another article shoved into my face.

European cookie law, of course, forcing me to pay attention to cookies that I really don't care about, at every new website.

Anything that moves when there is no need to, or that I as a user didn't initiate.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I barely use anything outside searches & the main content of a page so pretty much everything else is just noise and slowing up the real content being served.

[RoyReed]

Infinitely scrolling pages with a menu at the bottom that you can never quite get to!

[ken_b]

So apparently the only worthy page is blank except for a simple:

"Hello World"

The quote marks might be too distracting though :)

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