Technology is at the heart of everything I do but also the biggest bane of my life. I’m not a patient man when I double-click a file ill expect it to open now, if I load up a website or tool I expect it to load under a second. This is also true for most users as life gets ever more hectic we expect stuff faster and faster. If your site doesn’t open up in under 3 seconds say goodbye to half of your users. If it takes longer than 6 then 80% will bail and that’s a fact.
Speed is paramount and not just on the web. People expect the same for mobile apps too, if it looks good but is slow people aren’t going to wait to see awesome it looks or how beautiful the design is they don’t have the time and in this game time is most definitely money and seconds could cost millions.
one of the most common issues I see on sites is too many cooks have spoiled the broth. First you get a brief from the client then it’s given to a designer then a UX guy then back to the client for sign off then a developer then it goes back for final sign off. By the time gets built and put live its less about what best for the user but what you can get signed off. So it’s just one massive compromise on top of another which is why you get awful things like image carousels on homepages or flash-based designs.
Stock imagery is also one that is so common now that it is painful. Users can spot stock imagery a mile off and it lends nothing your best off with a product image then stock images of people.
But the single biggest problem I see again and again is lack of clarity. People think you need to be funny or clever or have something that’s no one has seen before. Well you have ten seconds from me clicking a link including load time to tell me who you are, what you do and why should I care. If you can’t do that you’ve lost a conversion.