There has been a lot of talk on the Internet lately on the inability for web site visitors to actually read the content on publisher’s pages because of all the annoyances and clutter on these pages. If you are one of these publishers, read on, this is to help you identify what frustrates your customers. If you are a reader like me, let me know of any major annoyances I may have missed out on.

If your site displays a full page ad for 15 seconds before an article can be read, you hate your customers.

If your site splits articles, even short ones, into multiple pages, you hate your customers.

If your site floats ads over the text content of the article, you hate your customers.

If your site presents a mobile version on the iPad, you hate your customers.

If your site uses tynt or any of those annoying hover over words scripts, you hate your customers.

If your site presents the content using less than 50% of the page, you hate your customers.

If your site allows ads that make sounds, you hate your customers.

If your site pops up additional windows behind the users view, you hate your customers.

If your site requires a third party social network login to read content, you hate your customers.

If your site does not load within 30 seconds, you hate your customers.

If your site has more than 3 sharing icons on an article, you hate your customers.

If your site requires more than 20 HTTP requests to load all content (excluding cached assets), you hate your customers.

If your site does not provide a permalink to the article, you hate your customers.

If your site does not publish the full article, as promised by a google search, you hate your customers.

If your site republishes other blog posts without attribution or source links, you hate your customers.

If your site uses more than one tracking cookie, namely your cookie, you hate your customers.

If your site is from a large publisher and you do not use a CDN, you hate your customers.

If your site nags web subscribers to buy a print subscription, you hate your customers.

If your site puts up a full page ‘buy the iPhone/iPad app’ instead of displaying the article, you hate your customers.

For the record, I am not advocating or even proposing getting rid of advertising or subscriptions, these are valid revenue streams and your customers don’t mind supporting your sponsors or subscribing to your content if the experience is good. They do mind bad experiences they currently face.