#5 - Email Spam

I'm starting this off at #5 because spam can be addressed somewhat easily these days with some of the better spam filtering services that are available. Spam is still out there though, and it's still very annoying.

Trying to prevent spam and trying to deal with spam that is already being sent your way will probably take up some of your valuable time if you use email to any degree. Plus, those people that are new to email might be put off by spam, or even the stigma surrounding it, and might even be scared of the Internet without even really getting into it because of this fear. Not a good thing.

#4 - Pop-up or Annoying Ads

I don't think ads on the Internet are bad as a whole. People need to make money on the Internet and ads help do that. Ads can be implemented in a good way too, but in a lot of cases they are implemented in an annoying fashion.

What I don't like, and what most Internet users will find frustrating is the highly obtrusive ads that either pop-up or have other highly annoying behaviors such as sliding in on the screen or even crashing a browser for some reason. The wrong type of ad implementation, even on a good web site, can just flat out kill the user experience.

#3 - Hard-to-use Online Forms

How many times have you tried to fill out a form on a web site only to get the form to error somehow? This can result from not putting enough characters in your username, forgetting to fill a required field, or any number of other requirements that the form employs. After trying to submit a form for the first time unsuccessfully you might end up needing to either re-fill a bunch of fields, or you might even manage to completely reset the form contents. Very annoying!

Many web sites have horrible form usability. Some forms don't tell you what is required while entering data, leaving you to find out that you entered something incorrectly only after you try to submit the form. Web forms should always let the user know what to expect!

In some cases a web form might somehow manage to erase data that you took 5-10 minutes to carefully fill out. This can also be very annoying and waste your time.

In other cases a web form might have wacky tab ordering. When you hit the tab key the cursor might not jump to the next logical field. This can get annoying really fast too!

I don't know how many times I've become frustrated with the usability of a web form. Usually it's the larger forms that frustrate me when they don't work right, but any size form can set me off if it's unusable. Granted, there are many web sites that implement forms very well, but you will always run into web forms that will test your patience at some point. It's just part of using the Internet.

#2 - Too Many User Accounts and Passwords

I have a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet) to manage my various Internet accounts and passwords. This spreadsheet probably houses over a hundred different username/password combinations for many different web sites. Online banking, eBay, blog sites, web forum accounts... the list goes on and on.

I am sure that I am not alone.

Any Internet user that likes to interact with web sites will compile a large list of accounts to remember and keep track of. This can get to be very annoying after a while, especially if you have a bad habit of not keeping your records updated properly like I do!

#1 - Internet Connection Interruptions and Outages

There really is nothing more annoying than an Internet connection dropping when you need it to work. Considering the short attention span of most Internet users, including myself, I would say that even 1-2 minutes of downtime on an Internet connection is enough to drive somebody insane and crazy.

People use the Internet because information can be accessed very quickly and efficiently. It is very annoying when a spotty Internet connection interrupts this convenience.

All in all, there are probably a lot more situations that can frustrate or annoy Internet users to no end. At the end of the day, patience prevails, even on the Internet. Next time you are being annoyed by something Internet related just take a deep breath, relax, and keep on trucking!