Deadly Web Cliches to Avoid

Web designers and developers understand that not everyone speaks their language. Part of the job is to translate what you the customer wants into actionable design priorities.

Keeping in mind that designers are often called upon to make many, many websites, they tend to see the same things crop up time and again. Nothing makes a designer grit their teeth than requests for the same old, tired cliches. Here are a few you should avoid.

“Make it pop.”

Text and images on a screen don’t pop. Balloons pop. Popcorn pops. Visual flair is a subjective judgement, and any good designer will have training and experience working with color palettes that are designed to be pleasing.

As the old saying goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Be specific and thoughtful in your requests. Don’t ask your designer to “make it pop.” Instead, try something like “Can I see in more contrasting colors?” or “How would that look with a different font?”

“Click here”

Albert Einstein once said that “What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.” While he obviously lived and died long before the advent of the internet, I like to believe he was thinking ahead to the use of “click here” on websites.

“Click here.” You see it everywhere. And it’s wrong on so many levels.

From a web design standpoint, any item that is intended to be clicked should be apparent as clickable. A colorful button that says “Contact Us” is obviously a link to a contact page. A section of text in a contrasting color that is underlined is the most basic form of hyperlinking, and is common knowledge. Links should have all the visual cues your users need to recognize them as such.

It’s also bad form. Naming the link “Click here” is bad form, as the user should be told what they’re getting by clicking. This will also help with search engine optimization, as search engines will understand what’s behind every link they’re following if they are descriptive: “Find more recipes for summer cocktails” is clearly better than “Click here.”

Besides, “Click here” is just plain redundant. You’re already on the internet, and you navigate through and between websites by clicking links. Telling users to click on something on a website is like telling them to get into their “Car for driving.”

Crayon font

Many websites dedicated to kids or to children’s charitable causes make heavy use of text that appears to have been written in crayon, usually in a childlike scrawl using a variety of primary colors.

The major problem here is that this text must be an image, because browsers cannot display handwritten fonts. Therefore you are automatically stifling potentially good search results by using non-standard fonts or images as replacements.

Secondly–and this is something of a judgement call–childlike fonts are pandering. The manual in your car’s glove compartment isn’t written in axle grease just because it deals with an automobile. Sloppy crayon style text to indicate “children” is just not necessary.

Overused stock images

The proliferation of sites like istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com has made it easy for anyone to purchase high quality photographs and save money over hiring a photographer to do custom work. This in and of itself isn’t a problem. It’s when everyone uses the same images on their websites that this becomes an issue.

Ever see the board room full of smiling, racially diverse employees? Or the close-up of to hands grasped in a handshake? Probably more than you can count. Don’t choose these for your site. Your company is unique, so why use the same photos as everyone else? If your designer submits this type of imagery in their design, it’s probably time to find someone else with a keener, more sophisticated eye.