Why do so many people find so many Web sites so exasperating? Until now, no rational theory could possibly explain the horrible usability fiascos that sites big and small inflict upon us with every click.

But the Full Disclosure Investigative Team recently discovered the existence of a secretive, yet successful, consultancy known as Web Online Experts--WOE for short. This dubious outfit has evidently been offering its services for years. Just look at the advice we uncovered in the company's confidential documentation:

Go flashy and stay flashy. Users adore animation! Don't even think about letting them skip your clever Flash introductions. If you've put in the effort to create a jazzy intro, the least a customer can do is sit through it on every visit.

Get loud. Workers surfing at the office enjoy a blast from their speakers as a pleasant respite from the daily grind---particularly if it's so loud they can't help sharing it with the boss two cubicles away.

Protect users from drive crashes. Hard disks can go bad when you least expect it. Design your site so that the "Save As" option refuses to capture to disk the information users want, thereby forcing them to preserve invoices, confirmation numbers, and other important information on good, solid paper. To placate travelers who sometimes find themselves without access to a printer, simply add a message urging "Write this down!"

Use human brainpower to format data. Why waste your company's programming and processing power on intelligently interpreting your users' input, when it's easier to keep 'em guessing? Someone too dim to realize that in your world "phone number" means digits without hyphens is someone you don't want as a customer.

Cripple the Back button. Minimize indecision! Make sure that the Back button keeps the user locked securely in your domain. And punish those who try to key back to fix a single item--zero out the entire form, so they have to start from scratch. Your customers will quickly learn to get things right the first time!

Hide essential information. Incoming phone calls? A needless expense. Minimize costs by listing 800 numbers on a page users can locate only by finding the site map and digging downward. A customer who isn't satisfied with a canned e-mail response is a born troublemaker.

Demand passwords and e-mail addresses. Users expect to create and use new passwords for every site they visit. It's some of the best fun you can find on the Web! And nothing pleases them more than a mailbox full of fascinating correspondence with colorful HTML graphics.

Open lots of windows. Pop-ups add spice to any site, but pop-unders are better. Hide new windows, and frustrated users will click again and again, wondering when something will happen. When they discover all the boxes they have to close, you get more chances to bond with them.

Draft a very long privacy policy. If 20 pages are good, 50 are better! Frame the whole thing as a single scrollable page in a tiny, non-resizable window, so navigation is a challenge instead of a bore.

Use a tenth-rate search engine. Why waste money on decent search tools? People will soon figure out that Google works better on your site than your own engine does. You pocket the profits!

Now that we have revealed these dastardly practices, Webmasters may abandon them in shame. (Full disclosure: PCWorld.com currently follows a few of them itself.) If not--to use the consultancy's own slogan--WOE is the Web!

• See more like this:
• web,
• site,
• sites,
• design,
• full disclosure