Web Crimes: How To Avoid Common Website Design Mistakes
|
|
Thinking about designing your own website? Think again about adding any of these "features"?
1. Animated gifs. You know the ones: the dancing baby, the rotating email sign. No matter what you chose, nothing screams out "amateur" quite like an animated gif. Next!
2. Mouse trails. Those little pictures, or strings of letters that "follow" your mouse everywhere it goes. In my case, they follow my mouse all the way to the "back" button, so I can surf on to somewhere less annoying.
3. Music. If I wanted to listen to music, I'd play some myself. Meanwhile, I'm reaching for that back button again?
4. Indecipherable colour schemes. Navy blue text on a black background. White on yellow. Ye Gods! It hurts my eyes just to look at it, never mind read it. Just say no.
5. Poor spelling and grammar. Specifically: text speak. It's bad enough on your mobile phone, never mind your website. If you're going to go to the trouble of setting up a website, at least make sure people can read it without cringing. Or it'll be that "back" button for you?
So, that's how to get it wrong, but how do you get it right?
There's no great mystery to great website design. Simplicity is the key; while there are a few people out there who go crazy for the piped music and the animations, there are probably a thousand more who're just driven crazy by them. A clean, simple website isn't going to offend anyone ? or prevent people from actually viewing the content of your site.
Remember that unless you're a website designer yourself, it's the content that really matters. Visitors don't come to your website to admire the pretty colours: they come to buy something, or to find information. If the thing they're looking for is obscured by your website design, they won't stick around to find it.
At the end of the day, design is a matter of taste, and you'll never be able to please everyone who visits your site. Functionality is a different matter altogether, however. Make sure your website is clearly designed, content rich, and easy to navigate, and you'll be on the right lines. Just stay away from those animated gifs?
Amber McNaught is co-owner of Hot Igloo Productions Ltd. - the small business specialists. Hot Igloo offer a range of services to businesses, including website design, public relations, internet marketing, copywriting and more. Visit their website at: http://www.hotigloo.co.uk
|
|
|
Created & Maintained by Empower! CMS Web Sites
Host2Sell Web Hosting | Emarketing Workshops | Site SEO Review | FREE NewsletterYour Web Site Is A Wonderland: What Picassos Art Taught Me About Persuasive Design
Whenever singer John Mayer sings his romantic song, "Your Body is a Wonderland", I can't help but think of web sites and usability. As a usability consultant, I see the devotion to his lover, and the time he spent uncovering every detail of her being, as the way most web site designers think we approach their web sites. When the lyrics arrive at "Take all your big plans; And break 'em; This is bound to be a while", I start giggling. It makes me think of Amazon.com. I'll explain why.Do You Have Three Hours To Browse?Amazon's jigsaw puzzle-like homepage greets me personally by name, which is smooth talking salesmanship. We've obviously "met" before. It has "recommendations" for me. There's a nifty advertisement that unfolds like those movie screens in school auditoriums where you know you're about to see something e...(related: Web Design)
How To Use Sliced Graphics To Layout Your Web Site
The problem with designing your site as a graphic, is thatit would take too long to load. Your visitors would leaveyour site immediately and move to your competitors website. How can you resolve this?Slicing graphics into a number of sections, then puttingthem together in tables is a great way to layout your website. It cuts down on the time for providing a quick designfor a potential client. It also allows you to bringelements of your site together that would be difficult todo with tables.The value of slicing gra...(related: Web Design)
Website Design: Redecorate Your Web Site To Increase Sales
Getting traffic to your website is not the onlyfactor that affects your sales.Your website has to be powerful enough to convertthese traffic and visitors to buyers.By re-decorating your website, you can empower itand amplify your sales and traffic.Below are a few website design tips to help you.The use of the right colors on your web site can actually increase your sales.When people see certain colors they can change their emotions or they can symbolize things related to the colors.Her...(related: Web Design)
Is Your Web Site Turning Visitors Away?
One of the biggest problems with Web sites is that the very first pageon the site is turning people away.Why? Because most Web site owners talk about themselves instead oftalking about their Web site visitor.You know what I mean. How often have you visited a Web site thatstarts off with the big bold heading "Welcome to XYX Company"?And it only goes downhill from there.The next paragraph says something like "XYZ Company has worked for 40years in manufacturing, testing and selling ABC products to businessesaround North America and the world. Blah blah blah ... who cares ... Yawn!"That sort of introduction is almost guaranteed to lose you business!But why is it so common? I think it's because people don't know whatelse to write!So in this article I'm going to give you a formula for writing compelli...(related: Web Design)
Title Tags - How To Make Them More Effective
The title tags of your web pages are more important than most web authors realize. Once you understand why the title is so important, you can easily write more effective title tags.What is the title tag?In your HTML code, the page title should be placed between the beginning and closing HEAD tags, ideally just after the beginning HEAD tag and before the first META tag.Why is the title tag important?The title tag is important for a variety of purposes.- Most browsers display your page with the title at the top of the browser window.- If someone bookmarks your page in their browser, their bookmark list will show your page using your page title. So if the title of your web page is "Home Page", as many are, your visitors' bookmark ...(related: Web Design)
Through The Looking Glass
My mother used to take me along when she visited an old ladydown a cobbled lane who had a crystal ball on her dining roomtable and a pack of playing cards. My mother was superstitiousand really believed a lot of what she was told by the old lady.She wanted to know what the future held not only for herselfbut for me, her only little boy. I was about five or six yearsold at the time, and used to gaze at the reflected images uponthe crystal ball of the sunlit window behind me a...(related: Web Design)
Orient Your First-time Web Site Visitor
Imagine spinning someone around so profoundly and for so long that when you finally tell them to open their eyes, they ask "Where am I?" not knowing if they are even on the same continent they started from. When someone comes to your web site from a search engine or through a link from another site, it's like that for them. They may have little or no context within which to understand your home page - or another page deep within your site that they've landed on.By imagining and engineering your site for that profoundly disoriented visitor, you can add subtle clues and explicit messages to your site that orient the person arriving at your site from who knows where. You can do this without "dumbing down" your presentation in any way, turnin...(related: Web Design)
Title Tags - How To Make Them More Effective
The title tags of your web pages are more important than most web authors realize. Once you understand why the title is so important, you can easily write more effective title tags.What is the title tag?In your HTML code, the page title should be placed between the beginning and closing HEAD tags, ideally just after the beginning HEAD tag and before the first META tag.Why is the title tag important?The title tag is important for a variety of purposes.- Most browsers display your page with the title at the top of the browser window.- If someone bookmarks your page in their browser, their bookmark list will show your page using your page title. So if the title of your web page is "Home Page", as many are, your visitors' bookmark ...(related: Web Design)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 Empower! Web Design | All Rights Reserved. | Web Design