I do a lot of web surfing as part of my job: news feeds, google this, google that, click anything that appears to be linkage, etc. As a result, I burn through a lot of websites.

A lot of BAD websites.

Here’s a short list of website bells and/or whistles that will ensure I never visit your site again. And, I don’t care how critical your content, or how pithy, or exclusive or gut-wrenchingly funny … I am never coming back.

1. Ads. You can sneak a few unobtrusive ads in there, like Google Adsense, but otherwise, if your site looks like a used car lot in a socio-economically depressed exburb, one visit was too many for me.

2. Popups. Free ipods be damned, I won’t be back. Even though my toolbar has blocked the ONE popup you had, I’m history. I can’t trust you; you might have been trying to pull a fast one with the popup.

3. Sound. I have my own music (and ipod, that I paid for), I sure as shit don’t want to listen to dreambeliever, fairy flighty, tinky winky music on your site.

4. Flash. Flash is for games that I play to avoid doing productive work. That pretty much begins and ends Flash’s usefulness.

5. Fade-in and/or Fade-out screens. W T F. When I click to arrive (or more likely, to leave) your site, I want in or out NOW, not 10 seconds later after your dandy fade-in or out shit finishes its routine.

6. Stylized cursors or mouse trails. If you have a MAX of five things that I could click on, I’ll allow a stylized cursor, maybe the crosshair. Mouse trails are never acceptable. Leave that kind of shit for the Goodson Family home page.

7. Too many colors. See above re: the exburb car lot. Pick a few colors (I mean three, MAYBE FOUR), and I’m counting white, black and gray in that number. I’m assaulted by colors and blinking lights on the web all day long. Give me serenity. now.

8. Animated icons or other blinking shit. If your icon must animate, it damn well better have a purpose. Animation hasn’t been edgy since 1998.