Website Design Rant #1: Textboxes and Colors

One of the things that I spend my time doing is designing websites. I try and get inspiration from other sites and follow some of the techniques of the most popular sites, whether that inspiration be with menu design, layout, or even color choices. Despite getting inspiration there is also a significant number of poor choices when it comes to web design. These example are even easier to learn from, because it's things to avoid. Below is a prime example of something to avoid.

I have blocked out the name of the company, just to be nice. What is wrong with this picture? First and foremost it's grey text boxes with white text. How the hell is anybody supposed to be able to read that? I don't care if it is part of your overall color scheme, a light text should never be on a light background. The text should be black so somebody can actually read the screen.

If you are designing a website, you should make sure that people can actually read what they are typing, nobody is perfect on a keyboard and most users are not going to type out their comments in another editor then copy and paste. So it appears that this company is trying not to solicit feedback from it's customers because it is not making it easy enough for users to be able to see what they are typing.

In addition to not being able to easily see what is being typed, the entire site does not work on a mobile device. You cannot move up and down the drop-down lists as demonstrated below.

On iOS devices the drop-down should automatically change to a picker that allows you to scroll through the list of options. This is not the case with this company. If you are designing a website, mobile should be included as part of the strategy. If you are going to go through a re-design, mobile should be taken into considering from the beginning, not be an afterthought. That's another rant for another day.