Web design and development is an industry in flux. It's caught somewhere between the brave new world of bleeding edge technology where new ground is broken daily and a more traditional media with processes and management in control of what gets built. Young enough to still be exciting and innovative, and yet still old enough to have learnt a thing or two. Which makes it all the more surprising to see websites launch without appearing to have actually drawn upon the experience that older veteran developers painfully discovered by getting things very, very wrong.
The problems that universally affect websites are user experience problems. They are things that make life for the user harder than it needs to be. The reason that these issues still affect websites today will become apparent for each of them, but often it's because the website designer, developer, content administrators and owners have chosen to make life easier for themselves rather than creating the very best website they can. It stems from laziness, lack of investment, and simply not caring; from the belief that creating a website is a chore that you have to do in order to run your business. That's understandable from a business owner whose job isn't building websites, but it's inexcusable from someone who either designs or codes for the web.
Back in the early days of the internet there was a mantra amoungst developers Of "Content is King." If you get the content of the website right then the users will come to you. It was the forerunner to SEO, the foundation of content marketing, and to some extent it still holds true now. If your content is exceptional your users will forgive a great deal. But not everything. If your website is an unusable mess that users find difficult to understand and to navigate then the best content in the world isn't ever going to save you.
Today the modern web user demands more than content if they're going to keep coming back. The proliferation of content sites, content marketing, blogging, social and so on has led to an internet where great story-telling is rarely reason enough for users to stay on one site in particular. Sharing tools mean that worthwhile content is aggregated across our networks within minutes of being published. The only solution to get repeat visitors now is to build an amazing experience, something that combines brilliant content with good design, great aesthetics and incredible usability.