Are some websites harder to use now?

[EmeraldRoulette]

Just wanted to see if it's me being stupid.

I get the impression that quite a few websites have a really user unfriendly interface now. I'm also finding that things are so fully loaded with graphics etc that they're incredibly slow to load. It doesn't seem possible to keep upgrading your stuff to keep up with all of this.

The thing that's really driven me nuts this evening is trying to organise a photo collage. It's incredibly straightforward normally. I'm not sure if the expectation now is that you edit all of your photos in something else, e.g. Canva so that you just send them one fixed image and they print that.

But given that so many websites seem to be unnecessarily complicated, I'm not sure if it's just really bad design.

Thank you for listening to my midnight rant! I was really hoping to get that job done this evening and it's normally such an easy job!

Place-marking! Very much sympathise and have same issue!

Yanbu, it's bloody annoying

So many websites just take bloody forever to load, and I've got a new phone!

The royal mail website only works when I use Google Chrome incognito

Ridiculous

@Theydidleaveamark555 thank you.

And the button to email them sent me to a bot which didn't want to give me their email address!

@mumofoneAlonebutokay at various stages, the website was moving so slowly, I actually wondered if the options I need are not visible to me because I need a fancier computer? It's partly because it's just so illogical that the options weren't there, if you see what I mean.

I needed to use the Royal Mail website to track an item last week, and there was a pop-up chatbot thing that wouldn't load properly but was concealing most of the screen.

One of my biggest peeves is trying to read a news article which is full of pop ups and adverts.

We have a local '-live' news agency, and when you try to view their pages, you are only ever able to see half of the article, rendering the rest entirely useless. Each time I think it might be fixed, nope, just half the news again.

I think a lot of these issues are largely caused by ads/revenue. My latest annoyance is on social media reels (which I know I shouldn't watch, but here we are) have suddenly decided to put the 'punchline' or 'answer' or whatever, into their text within the post - rather than just say what they're trying to say. It's obviously to build engagement and interaction, but it makes me feel used and annoyed, so have stopped clicking them, in protest.

Crikey, that was a bit of a deviation, sorry. Peri-rage anyone..? 🤣

@FreezingJane oh that's definitely a thing with news and social media. However, with a website where I am trying to do some work, or buy a product, or have already bought a product in the case of Royal Mail, I expect better I guess.

Things like local newspapers I can imagine they do need the ad revenue, but I can't help thinking there must be a better way of managing that. I mean, if you can't actually read what you've gone there to read you're just going to give up!

I'm not sure you were trying to use the same kind of thing, but before Christmas I was trying to print pictures on FreePrints (or the like) and I just couldn't get it to work. Similarly to how you're describing. And it wasn't because of adverts, it was in an app. Just not working. I gave up in the end.

Today technology failed me again. Trying to add cash to my DCs 'ParentPay' account at school and the website was down all morning, meaning no lunch for them today. Thankfully they'd taken something it to eat, but another example of how technology that is meant to be saving us, is making us all feel crazy!

I understand and defo agree, so annoying

A website not working is like phonelines being down, shouldn't happen all the time

Yes. It drives me nuts. On top of inscrutable navigation, functionality that doesn't function, dead links (even within the same site) and ridiculous big-picture landing pages that are really hard to get away from, I'm now seeing more and more sites that only work on mobiles. I use a PC, and the sodding pages won't scroll down because they've disabled scroll (the built-in default) to enable some totally unnecessary jiggery pokery they think makes it cute on a mobile.

Does this lead me to think "Gosh, I'm so desperate to view their invisible products, I must transfer myself to a tiny little screen and see if the bastard thing works"? Of course not. I shop elsewhere.

I don't mind ads. Everything needs paying for. I do mind ads that have been allowed to spread all over the content, so the thing you wanted to read is covered up and you can't get rid of the ad.

You're right about non-loading and slow-loading content, too. They must have stopped teaching developers to design for older tech and slower connections. Mine are average on both counts, but I still waste far too much time hanging about in case the images will show up or the linked page I clicked is going to finish loading.

Plus, accessibility's getting worse. It's always been bad; now it's so abysmal that 95% of the internet won't work for users with disabilities (Mumsnet's not too bad).

Thanks, OP! I could rant more (much more ...) but that was cathartic 😆

@Garlicnorth oh wow. I didn't know that about accessibility. I also haven't come across lack of scrolling - that is mad.

thanks to everyone for replying. Proof that I haven't gone mad. I have spoken to the company now and what's happened is they have removed some functionality from the website - but they haven't removed the labels. So for example,, there is still a section for your saved projects - but you can't save projects. There are still labels up for editing parts that cannot be edited.

So I was looking at it thinking "there's a label..so I must be doing something wrong." But no.

It feels as if there's quite a lot of resources put into changing things like this, but I can't see how they make a profit out of it. Given that everything is profit driven, I thought these sorts of problems would have corrected themselves by now?

These problems have been going on for quite some time now I think about it. One colleague who is quite knowledgeable about this stuff said to me that people are just deploying tech that they don't understand for the sake of it. But how long can that go on?

sorry, I've lumped in consumer issues and business user issues all in one there!

Anything that is done on a computer these days is just such hard work and it didn't used to be. When I worked on (very basic) websites, we were often told to keep in mind that users wanted minimum clicks. Now I feel as if UX designers think we will enjoy having maximum clicks and maximum fuss to get anywhere.

if anyone sends me through something to review on gmail or questionnaire I have to let them know I can’t (ds school uses this system and I know I am not the only one who has issues with gmail)

I am always locked out of gmail then they don’t send authentication to my other saved email or phone or I have to use two devises to do this links on the support links just go round in circles and then asking to use the pass key to bypass this bit

even thinking about is raising my heart rate 🤯