At the Small Museums meeting in Akaroa on October 26th, I gave a talk on museum websites, and walked the group through a randomly chosen (Australian!) museum website, pointing out the problems as I went. Now, it’s a bit too easy to just rip into other people’s sites (in fact, the original title of this post may have employed the word “suck”), so I won’t do that here; the handout for that presentation is on Adzebill for those that have to know which unlucky institution it was. Some problems, though, were surprisingly common on first-generation museum sites, so I’ve made a checklist. If you work at a museum, let me know how your site measures up.

• Splash screen. Very 1998. Why ask your visitors to click through a picture or (worse) an animation just to visit your site?
• JPEGs with grubby compression artifacts or illegible text.
• Sponsor or tourism links on the Welcome page, all sending visitors somewhere else if clicked: how welcoming is that, exactly?
• Giving the (not very skilled) web designer a free advertising link, right there on your home page. Let them get their own website.
• Telling visitors to go get a bigger screen, or that they need Quicktime, Flash, and a different browser before they may experience the wonders that lie within.
• Fancy animations. Usually representing time and money that could have been better spent on some basic site testing with actual visitors. Bonus points for animations that repeat incessantly, or for more than one per page.
• Any error messages, like “Sorry, your browser doesn’t support Java” (bonus point if your browser actually does). Let the site degrade gracefully, and only show the fancy stuff if the visitor can see it.
• Typos, helpfully informing us the site hasn’t been proofed since it was erected. Bonus point for each year it’s been up.
• “Welcome to the [Generic Museum] site.” I think we can assume they’re welcome.
• A page that links to itself: usually found in a sidebar of links that always look the same, no matter what page you’re on.
• Links that don’t change color to remind you that you’ve visited the page. Perhaps you’re supposed to be taking notes.
• No “breadcrumbs” showing you where you are in the site. People will not view the pages in the order you want, and they’ll come from Google (you hope!) So they have to know where everything is and where they are at all times.
• Bad typography: “typewriter” quotes, missing apostrophes, hyphens instead of dashes, and no line length controls (making text stretch all the way across the screen).
• Happy-happy “marketing” talk; needless verbiage that could be cut by half.
• Any incomplete visitor information: not stating exactly what hours and public holidays you’re open, or what your admission charges/suggested donations are, or if you don’t take credit cards, or don’t have disabled access.
• No single page a visitor can print out to prepare for a visit, containing all the information they need but fitting on a single piece of paper. Why not a higher-resolution, printer-friendly version? In A4 and US Letter sizes?
• A cruddy map, that doesn’t use MapQuest or anything similar, so visitors can’t get driving directions or zoom out to place the museum in context.
• No clues as to when the page was written. Visitors are reassured by knowing the site is still alive—you don’t need “last updated” tags, just some recent news.
• “Last updated [two years ago].”
• A clickable email link on your Contact page, unless you like getting spam. Try sending visitors to an online form; even better, help them structure their enquiry, direct their questions to real people, and provide a FAQ.
• Who are those real people, anyway? Are their names, mugshots, areas of expertise, and phone numbers on the Contact page?
• Links for the sake of linking, particularly to the generic home page of a site visitors could easily find on their own. Rather than a “Links” page, use smart, directed links as annotations or footnotes to your own content.
• “Back to [another page]” links. Either give a proper link in an always-visible sidebar, or let them use the back button. They know how.
• Education pages without downloadable lesson plans, so teachers can’t prepare, or even decide if they want to visit the museum or not.
• No PDF masters for photocopying/printing. Why are museums still mailing out educational materials? “Because otherwise people might steal our precious activity sheets!” There’s often a tension between hanging onto your proprietary intellectual property, and giving everything away free. Learn to let go.
• “Under construction.” Any empty or “coming soon” pages. Bonus points if they’re “News and Events” pages.
• Virtual tour, or anything that’s just little pictures of the exhibits, implying that visitors should drive to the museum for the “real” experience (and tough luck if you don’t live in that country, mate…)
• When the above problems are pointed out, saying “we know, our website’s terrible, but we’re getting it redesigned professionally next month/year/decade”. OK, but why not at least fix everything listed above. Say, tomorrow?

(A version of this list appeared in Te Ara, the New Zealand Museums Journal.)