Quick, Hide the Links
A good way to irk people who travel with link-underlining turned off is to code plain and linked text to the same colour. Either they have to stop and reset their colour options, or they spend ages moving their cursor slowly over the text waiting for the pointer to change. Be sure you don't include any conveniently located buttons to offset this deterrent.
Animated GIFs
Some people insist on using the status line to tell when a file has finished loading. But animated GIFs never finish loading! Use lots of them to keep that "file loading" message flashing steadily. Better yet, bury them way down the page so that it's not readily apparent that they're the cause of the lengthy load time. With luck, some people will get bored and leave your site.
Ticker Tape Messages
Some people think that status bar is useful for checking the URLs of links they do find -- to see if they've already been to that annoying site, or to see which links will take them far away from your site. In either case, they may hang around. Don't waste this opportunity: put a looping ticker tape message there. It doesn't have to be useful information -- in fact, the more incomprehensible or unrelated to your website, the better.
Lost in Gormenghast
"Web-wandering" doesn't really mean that people like to spend time going round in a cyber-maze. A site that has grown like Gormenghast Castle will lose more web wanderers than anything else. Whatever you do, don't plan your site logically; don't do an organization chart so a logical structure emerges unannounced; don't develop a clear navigation system (have directional markers mean different things on every page!). In essence, don't do anything to let those intruders know (1) where they are or (2) where they want to get to (aside of away from your site). IF you've already put up a well-organized site, redesign it -- see if you can make a Celtic knot out of the links on your site!
Nasty Surprises
This trick is on the way out, but is still good for people who haven't yet got multi-media computers. If you're offering sound or video files, make sure they're NOT labeled as such. With earlier versions of NN and no sound card installed, a click on an audio file produces a system crash. It happened more than once to me and frankly, by the time I recovered from the crash and got back online, I did NOT go back to that website.
Large Graphic Files
A picture is worth a thousand words, but on the Web, especially with the connections most people have, it will take much longer to display than all that text. If you do it right, you can drive away everyone who's actually paying for their connect-time. My suggestions are:
make it big, very big (anything under 75K is almost loadable, especially as the frequency of 28.8 modems increases)
if you can't make it big, make it many (a dozen, or better yet, 2 dozen smaller graphics on a page will take ages to load; for maximum effect, animate them)
don't use in-line images (a.k.a. thumbnails); use the fullsize picture right there, at the top of the page, with no text around it for the viewer to read while waiting
if you must use in-line images, make sure they're very small and muddy, so the visitor has to click on them to figure out what the heck they are; also, don't mention that the fullsize picture is 200K -- once they've waited 5 minutes and can only see the top 1/4 inch of the picture, they'll figure it out for themselves
finally, in combination with any (or all) of the above, make it irrelevant -- nothing will drive a surfer further away from your site than waiting 10 minutes for a baby picture of you, or a fuzzy snapshot of your pet of choice
NOTE: if you need help scanning and editing graphics to create large, slow-loading images, check back here soon for a tutorial.
Promise Them Anything
Another feature guaranteed to cut down on call-backs is the eternal promise. Promise whatever you like, promise it soon. But don't bother putting it up. After a while, those surfers who want what your promising will give up checking back to see if it's there yet. One of my favourite examples promises "more content soon" and is dated April 1995!
Broken Links
Broken links to other sites won't be much help in annoying visitors who understand the fluid nature of the WWW. Sites move; servers change names and directory structures; webmasters forget to post "change of address" pages. You can't be expected to spend all your valuable time checking up on other people's websites.
But broken links to your own files and graphics, now they're a different story. Netscape displays a truly ugly little icon if a graphic reference is incorrect. Aesthetically sensitive people have been known to leave a site immediately one appears on their screen. For document files, the best situation is to prominently display a link with an truly tantalizing title or description to a file that's not there. Whether it moved or never was doesn't matter. The annoyance is in the glorious "Error 404: File Not Found!"
Waste Their Time (1)
Put up attractive buttons with tantalizing titles that promise great content. Link them to pages with a nicely formatted header, one of those nifty "under construction" graphics and text to the effect that this page is "in progress" or "coming soon."- and nothing else!
Waste Their Time (2)
Same as above, but make sure the ultimate destination is 3 or 4 pages away -- each of the intervening pages should have just enough information to make them think they're on the trail of something really useful. Then, for the punch line, the final page should be (1) as above, or (2) have content completely unrelated to the original topic.
Frazzle 'em with Frames
Netscape's frame function is a real asset in designing an uninviting website, but you have to use it properly.
First, make several frames -- the more there are, the smaller the viewing area in each. Remember, most people have only 14 or 15 inch monitors.
Second, make sure the text and graphics in each frame are large enough that the frame must be scrolled to view -- preferably even to figure out what's in the frame. Scroll bars further reduce the viewing area.
Don't fret about making all frame content relevant -- some of the frames should have useless or irrelevant content. For maximum impact, animate it.
Finally, if you must include a "no frame" option, make sure it's artfully disguised, or at least at the end of a long file.
Front Door Frustration (1)
Whatever you do, don't put the title of the page in the tags in the headers of your files. This information is used for labeling bookmarks, should visitors make them. Something cryptic, irrelevant or incomprehensible make finding your site amidst a long list of bookmarks a real challenge. My favourite titles are "Put Your Title Here" (a helpful hint inserted by some HTML editing programs, "151.196.75.43" (the site's I.P. address) and " . . . " (a truly cryptic title).
Front Door Frustration (2)
Some people put up front pages with nothing on them but very pretty graphics. Clicking on the graphic -- when you figure that out; there should be no visual or textual clues on the page -- takes you to the real homepage.
This trick has a number of advantages. First, you get to spend loads of time creating truly magnificent (and complex -- don't worry about filesize; it's the only thing on the page) graphics. First-time or novice visitors will wait patiently through the whole download before they discover there's nothing else to see. Then they'll have to ponder what to do next. Some of them are bound to go away.
To foil those who get past this front door decoration and then bookmark your real homepage, use the previous trick.
Show 'em What You're Worth
You're good, and you've got the awards to prove it. Every website award comes with a nifty graphic, some quite large AND animated. Don't be shy. Put them all on your front page, the more the merrier. For maximum impact, don't use up your server space storing the graphics: just make links to the award-givers' sites -- major slowdown in loading!
Quantity, Not Quality
Web pages can go on forever -- and some seem to. Take advantage of this. Put all your content on one page; makes for endless downloads and saves you developing file-naming conventions as well.
How? Indulge yourself: write, write, write. And do not edit. After all, your words are gems, and web pages don't run out after 11 or 14 inches like those pesky paper ones. Long lists also take advantage of unlimited page length. Put a cute little icon beside each entry (make sure they're all different; if you use the same one, it only downloads once). If you don't have time for all that work, don't fret; 120K text-only files still take a long time to load.
Don't Harass the Webminder
A good way to put off people who think this is an interactive medium: hide the mail links to the webmaster/minder. Or, if you need your name (or nom de Web) on the page, just link it back to your home page. If you must include an e-mail address, by not making it a mailto link, you add the disincentive of making people type it in themselves.
Dazzle 'em with Colour
The Web is a full colour medium. Use it. Everyone knows about busy backgrounds -- heck, half the sites out there have backgrounds that threaten to drown out whatever's on the page. You've got to be creative. Try colour co-ordination, for example. Take your favourite bright, busy background and set text and link colours to tastefully co-ordinate. With some fine tuning, you can make the site into a "find the content" game.
Alternately, go for clash: pick your colours to jar as much as possible -- if you do it properly, viewers will leave to avoid headaches. Variant: go for neon effects (specialized skill). With the right colour combinations, you can create a page on which the text literally pulsates -- at first glance, it looks really sharp. Prolonged viewing will make people cross-eyed.
Of course, this set of annoyances is tricky. There are so many monitors out there and they all handle colour differently. To ensure maximum success with these techniques, you'll have to text them on a wide range of monitors.
No Text Navigation/Slow Loading Buttons
This combination won't keep first-time curiosity seekers out, but it will sure any return visitors who know where thy want to go on your site and are in a hurry to get there. Better yet, replace the buttons with an over-large image map.
Comments and suggestions to Gail van Varseveld