• An excessive amount of things that “blink”.

• Busy, non-uniform or just plain obnoxious background images.

• Instructions for viewing the website. For example:

• “Best viewed with Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher”
• “Best viewed with 1024×768 screen resolution”
• “Best viewed with whatever”
• “Optimized for whatever”

• Frames

• An excessive use of animated graphics (a couple here and there are ok, but not more than 1 or 2 on a page)

• “Pop-up ”advertising.

• Non-related advertisements. Advertisements that have absolutely nothing to do with the purpose and content of the website itself.

It has been found in surveys that consumers do not want to wait very long for a page to load. Remember, the more bell and whistles a page has, the longer the load time. This is especially true with dial-up connections. I use simple HTML sites for easy editing and superb looks.