Things that do not fly on a website in 2026
Every so often it is healthy to name the things that have quietly stopped working, before they end up on your site by accident. None of this is a moral failing. Most of it was a good idea once. It is just past time. Said with love.
Stock photos of strangers. You know the ones. A team of impossibly delighted people gathered around a single laptop. A woman laughing alone with a salad. Everyone can tell. A blurry, real photo of your actual hands doing your actual work beats the most polished stock image ever taken, because one of them is true and the other is furniture.
The pop-up that arrives before you do. A visitor has been on the page for one and a half seconds and is already being asked to subscribe to a newsletter about a thing they have not yet decided they care about. Let people look at the work first. Ask later, if at all.
Carousels nobody scrolls. The rotating banner that flicks to the next slide right as you start reading the first one. Studies have been quietly confirming for years what everyone already suspected: almost no one waits for slide two. Pick the one thing you most want to say and just say it.
Autoplay video with sound. A surprise concert in a quiet office. Instant, frantic hunt for the mute button. Never worth it.
"We value your privacy," said by the thing harvesting it. If a wall of toggles is the first thing a visitor meets, the site is serving the trackers before the person. We would rather set very little and be able to say so plainly.
The thread running through all of it is the same. Each one puts the website's wants ahead of the visitor's and visitors have got very good at feeling that, even when they could not name it. Take all of it out and you are left with something increasingly rare: a site that simply respects the person reading it. That, it turns out, never goes out of fashion.