Web designers & developers often focus on web standards, table-less layouts or CSS effects like styled lists or sidebars etc. All these things are perfectly OK unless they are executed at the expense of findability.

Findability is a seemingly new term that has become a buzzword recently due to a book called Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter.

Here are collected the 5 worst findability crimes committed By web designers & developers you should avoid:

1. Links

Why tell anybody what you do when you can make them guess? “Profile”, “projects” is much more mysterious than just writing “web design”, “graphic design” or “programming”. Let them click to find out or bounce if they are not patient enough.

2. HTML titles

For years web designers used “cool” HTML titles for their websites, the more special characters, the less decriptive keywords the better: —===###/\Cool Title/\###===— Also imagine a book cover with only the author’s name but with no title, many web designers won’t disclose what they do or offer. Some obviously only offer portfolios. Many sell “work” or “projects”.

3. Cool Menus

Since at least 1999, the more complicated JavaScript menus you used, the better, many of them are still not crawlable by search engines, also most people won’t click hidden menu items.

4. URL structure

Many high profile websites still use URL structures that are unstable, seemingly random and unreadable for both humans and robots. They probably never heard of the term URL design.

5. Pagination

Do you think people click 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 pages just to see some images? Some do, but you lose a large part of your audience with each click. Also those who only scan the page will leave instantly.

If you want people to buy your services, they must find you first. Let people find you!