Horrors don’t just come around during Halloween. Surf the Internet and you’ll quickly discover that nightmares occur on many web sites. Just consider these terrible web design decisions that turn otherwise good web sites into a monster:

1) Slow downloads. If you have to wait several minutes for web sites to download, why would you bother waiting? If you really need the information on specific web site and cannot get it because the web page is downloading slowly, you end up frustrated and enraged. Remember how you felt when you couldn’t log into your e-mail account while waiting for an important e-mail, simply because your e-mail provider’s web site was down? Don’t subject your viewers to this sort of rage. Eliminate anything that could result in slow downloads from your web site, and your web site will be instantly less scary.

2) Unwanted content, such as music and animation. Imagine this: it’s a quiet day at the office. You click an interesting link to be taken to a web site, and embarrassing, cheesy music fills the entire office. Curious coworkers come over to take a look at what you are viewing. You may be laughed at you for the web site you are looking at. Unfortunately, many web designers and web design company professionals inflicts such punishment on viewers all the time. Inflicting unwanted content on unsuspecting viewers is not likely to get you the traffic you want. Embarrassing, unwanted content is just scary. It has no place on your web site.

3) Garish colors and amateur photographs. Some web sites are truly frightening to look at — and I’m not talking about the sort of web sites that feature the latest horror film. There are web sites that have screaming yellow backgrounds, white text, and fuzzy photographs that look as though they were taken with a 1920s Brownie camera. If your web site looks unprofessional and has bright jarring colors and fuzzy photographs, no one will take you seriously.

4) Lots of busy images and colors. If your website is busy, it will not look professional. Consider who you would trust more — the business man dressed in a business suit, or the business man dressed in a sweatshirt with little fuzzy teddy bears imprinted all over it? The answer is simple, but despite this many businesses continue to put the equivalent of that teddy bear sweatshirt on their web sites with backgrounds and images that are nothing short of annoying. If every web page is a different color and has a different annoying background image, you are just driving customers away. Your web site is not a test pattern — all your web pages should look like they belong to the same, professional web site.

5) Eye-hurting features. Do you have a bright flashing letters spelling out your latest sale? Do you have bright reds, blues, and florescent colors? If so, you could be frightening your readers away with a web site that is simply screamingly out loud. Tone it down a few degrees, and your Web audience will be more likely to read what you have to say.