WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT

How to Avoid the 12 Common Web Design MistakesCopyright 2002 by Herman Drost Are people visiting your web site but not buying? This may be asign and the time to do some redesign of your web site. Oftenyou are so close to what you have created, that you can’t seeobvious design mistakes. I often do the same when writing anarticle – everything looks fine when I have finished, yet when Ireview it the next day and I’m amazed at how many mistakes Ihave made. Let’s look at some of the most common Web Design mistakes: 1.Sloppy Web Site Copy – your heading and first paragraph shouldclearly indicate the purpose of your web site. “Content is King”on the Net, so make sure there is plenty of focused informationfor your visitors. The content should draw the visitor throughthe site to take action in the end. Include contact informationon every page in case people have questions. 2.Bad Color Coordination – avoid using dark text on a darkbackground. Use dark text on a light background, such as blackon white. Use colors that blend well together – observe natureor look at paintings to get some idea of good colorcombinations. 3.Pages Load Too Slowly – using too many images or insertinglarge images on a web page, slow down the loading time of yourweb page. Optimize your images (reduce their size) before youinsert them on your site, otherwise your visitors will leavebefore your site is loaded. 4.Poor Navigation – this means visitors can’t easily find theinformation. They experience broken links, error pages ordiscover too many moving objects (animations, flash, scrollingtext, marquees) – all these will annoy the visitor and cause himto click elsewhere. Keep your navigation simple by creatingclear links on all web pages. 5.Orphan Pages – these are pages other than your homepage, wherethe visitor has no idea how it fits in with the overallstructure of your web site. You should always have a link to thehomepage, so visitors know where they are on your web site. 6.Long Scrolling – the visitor has to scroll horizontally, ormany pages vertically to view the whole web page. Create thewidth of your web page to fit on one screen, to avoid horizontalscrolling and have a maximum of 3 pages to be scrolledvertically. 7.Meta Tags Missing – without optimizing your web page with adescription or keywords, people can’t find you on the searchengines. Research key words or phrases relevant to your sitecontent. Include them in your title, description and Web Sitecopy. 8.Lack of Marketing Strategy – a beautiful lawn without sun orwater will soon die. A Web Site without visitors will soon diealso. They are the life blood for your website. Create numerousmarketing strategies to attract visitors to your web site – younever know which one will be the most effective. 9.Poor Layout and Design – create an aesthetically pleasingdesign to keep the visitors on your site. Create enough whitespace between your text and images by using margins. Don’toverlap text and images and avoid capitalizing all text – itgives the impression you are shouting at your visitors. Usefont type such as Arial or Verdana to make it easier to read onyour computer screen. 10.Avoid Using Frames – frames don’t allow you to bookmark thepage or return to it and sometimes the URLS stop working. 11.No Cross Browser Compatibility – you may be losing manycustomers if your Web Site is not compatible to the browsersmost people are using. Internet Explorer (IE 4, 5, 6) iscurrently the dominant browser, and most users are displaying800x600 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65Kcolors. (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) .Therefore check your design with these statistics in mind. 12.Outdated Information – your web site is like a garden. If youallow weeds to block out the sun and take over your garden, itwill be destroyed. Attracting and keeping web site visitors,means continually adding new information (i.e. latest news),deleting irrelevant, outdated information and removing brokenlinks. Continuous maintenance of your web site is crucial toattracting and retaining visitors. If you don’t have time to doit yourself, hire a Web Gardener (Web Designer), to keep yoursite looking fresh, clean and fast loading.