Is My Web Site Ineffective?
Checklist 2

Intro | Checklist 1 | Checklist 2 | What do I do now?

The mistakes in Checklist 1 are fatal. I’m not sure how many of the mistakes in Checklist 2 you can make before you kill your web site.

It comes down to the two biggest words in web design — “It Depends”. If your site has to be accessible for people with physical disabilities, then checking the first box is fatal for your site.

Generally, the fewer the checks the better it is for your site.

Checklist 2:

Our site isn’t accessible to visitors with physical disabilities.
Our site doesn’t use white or off-white color for background.
Our site doesn’t use black text.
Our site uses Frames.
Our site uses the wrong doctype.
Our site doesn’t use CSS.
Our site uses CSS, but it’s inline CSS.
Our sites logo is not at top left corner.
Our site has no search engine.
Our site’s search engine is not at top-right of page.
Our site’s search engine box isn’t long enough for visitors to see what they’re typing.
Our site has a search engine, but it isn’t on every page.
Underlined text is not link text.
Our site uses invalid HTML attributes (marginwidth, etc.).
Our site uses graphics as links.
We haven’t validated our site’s HTML code.
We haven’t validated our site’s CSS.
We haven’t checked to see if our site’s links are broken.
Our site uses deprecated markup (like the CENTER tag).
Our site doesn’t use a style switcher.
We haven’t checked to see how our site looks in grayscale.
We haven’t checked our site using the Firefox plugin “Web Developer”.
We haven’t checked our site using the “The Web Page Analyzer”.
Our site uses the CSS hover attribute on text.
We don’t optimize our site’s CSS or HTML files.
Our accounting figures don’t line up on the decimal point.
Our site’s logo is disproportionate for top screen.
Corporate logo is not at top left of screen.
Logo links to home page on sub-pages.
There are links to the home page on every page — but the home page.
Putting dates on material that’s not updated regularly.
Our site’s content is full of jargon.
Our site’s content is full of acronyms.
Our site’s use of abbreviations is inconsistent.
We don’t use a consistent tone throughout. We switch back and forth from colloquial to clinical etc.
Our font sizes are fixed and can’t be resized.
We put more than one idea in a paragraph.
Not declaring a background color.
Our site uses unencoded ampersands.
Our site is SPAN and/or DIV happy.
Hit counters.
Contact information is not available.
Our site doesn’t provide multiple methods to be contacted. (Contact Us form, phone number, address, e-mail, etc.)
We use dates and times on a site that’s not about dates and times.
Some of our pictures are not recent — we have a 20 year-old photo of some employees.
Our site uses JPG when it should use GIF images and vice-versa.
We use SVG file format because we can.
We over-optimize our images.
Our site has graphics that look like a link, but aren’t.
We don’t check to see if scanned images are scanned on dirty scanners.
Check on an outside machine if all your sites’ graphics actually load.
There’s no reason for a globe image. We get that you’re global.
Our site uses an ugly background image.
We use Dynamic HTML navigation.
We don’t have a site map.
We have a site map, but it’s graphics based.
Our site uses liquid design.
Our site uses fixed-width design.
We use table borders on content other than accounting-type data.
OUR HEADINGS ARE CAPITALIZED.
Our text is full of superlatives like “This product will solve every problem you have.”
Our paragraphs have too much text. (We’re a web of scanners.)
Our site bolds a lot of text.
Our site italicizes a lot of text.
Our site’s font sizes are fixed and can’t be resized.
Our site uses three or more font faces on a page.
We don’t have a CSS file for printing pages.
We don’t use logical file names for documents or graphics.
Our site uses graphics that don’t enhance the page.
Our graphics and text don’t match up.

 Some of our documents run across multiple pages, but we don’t give the option to see it all on one page.
Back button doesn’t go back because we’ve disabled it.
Our site doesn’t provide a feedback mechanism.
Our forms mix up checkboxes and radio buttons.
Our site has pull-down (drop list) menus.
We don’t use bullets to organize information.
We don’t manually spell check TITLE, ALT tags, etc. (spell checkers don’t check these).
Our content is not timely.
Our content is not updated frequently.
Our site doesn’t separate style from content.

back to top

Intro | Checklist 1 | Checklist 2 | What do I do now?