Four annoying things about websites
Websites are becoming increasingly desperate for your attention and personal data.
As brands and companies scrap over customers, they’re using aggressive tactics on their websites to secure your information.
The most commonly used is the pop-up screen that begs you to sign up to a newsletter or to receive special offers.
These are like a digital slap in the face each time you enter a website. They are annoying and interrupt your browsing and are sometimes difficult to close.
Often they entice you with a $5 discount in exchange for your personal data, which is not a good deal if you value your privacy.
You can change settings on your browser to try to block them but it’s not very effective.
I’ve also noticed more websites asking to track your location. They do this so they can serve you with information relevant to your location so you see prices in New Zealand dollars rather than British pounds.
This is another thing to avoid and websites should make it easy for you to manually choose currency or location settings rather than tracking you.
Also worth avoiding are desktop notification requests. Brands and companies do this to notify you about events even when you’re not on their website.
But as the surge of notifications grows, it’s best to try to limit these unless they’re really important to you.
The next tactic used by websites are videos that play automatically. Having your computer on mute all the time can help you avoid being startled but that’s not always practical.
The videos I like the least are the ones that follow you around on the screen. They start as large videos at the top of the page but shrink down into the corner of your screen as you scroll down. Also annoying are the small ones embedded in the sides of websites so they’re hard to find and shut down.
Website browsers such as Safari and Chrome are pushing back on behalf of users and are starting to block videos that play automatically. There are also plugins for browsers but these can be hit and miss.
Unfortunately, there’s no single digital version of a ‘‘no circulars’’ sign though if someone did invent an app like this I’d happily pay for it.
But users shouldn’t have to put up with these tactics. Browsing a website should be fun and informative, not an experience to dread.
Companies need to do better or users will go elsewhere.