How to Avoid the 12 Common Web Design Mistakes
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
Are people visiting your web site but not buying? This may be a
sign and the time to do some redesign of your web site. Often
you are so close to what you have created, that you can’t see
obvious design mistakes. I often do the same when writing an
article – everything looks fine when I have finished, yet when I
review it the next day and I’m amazed at how many mistakes I
have made.
Let’s look at some of the most common Web Design mistakes:
1. Sloppy Web Site Copy – your heading
and first paragraph should clearly indicate the purpose
of your web site. “Content is King” on the Net, so make
sure there is plenty of focused information for your
visitors. The content should draw the visitor through
the site to take action in the end. Include contact
information on every page in case people have questions.
2. Bad Color Coordination – avoid using
dark text on a dark background. Use dark text on a light
background, such as black on white. Use colors that
blend well together – observe nature or look at paintings
to get some idea of good color combinations.
3. Pages Load Too Slowly – using too
many images or inserting large images on a web page,
slow down the loading time of your web page. Optimize
your images (reduce their size) before you insert them
on your site, otherwise your visitors will leave before
your site is loaded.
4. Poor Navigation – this means visitors
can’t easily find the information. They experience broken
links, error pages or discover too many moving objects
(animations, flash, scrolling text, marquees) – all
these will annoy the visitor and cause him to click
elsewhere. Keep your navigation simple by creating clear
links on all web pages.
5. Orphan Pages – these are pages other
than your homepage, where the visitor has no idea how
it fits in with the overall structure of your web site.
You should always have a link to the homepage, so visitors
know where they are on your web site.
6. Long Scrolling – the visitor has
to scroll horizontally, or many pages vertically to
view the whole web page. Create the width of your web
page to fit on one screen, to avoid horizontal scrolling
and have a maximum of 3 pages to be scrolled vertically.
7. Meta Tags Missing – without optimizing
your web page with a description or keywords, people
can’t find you on the search engines. Research key words
or phrases relevant to your site content. Include them
in your title, description and Web Site copy.
8. Lack of Marketing Strategy – a beautiful
lawn without sun or water will soon die. A Web Site
without visitors will soon die also. They are the life
blood for your website. Create numerous marketing strategies
to attract visitors to your web site – you never know
which one will be the most effective.
9. Poor Layout and Design – create
an aesthetically pleasing design to keep the visitors
on your site. Create enough white space between your
text and images by using margins. Don’t overlap text
and images and avoid capitalizing all text – it gives
the impression you are shouting at your visitors. Use
font type such as Arial or Verdana to make it easier
to read on your computer screen.
10. Avoid Using Frames – frames don’t
allow you to bookmark the page or return to it and sometimes
the URLS stop working.
11. No Cross Browser Compatibility
– you may be losing many customers if your Web Site
is not compatible to the browsers most people are using.
Internet Explorer (IE 4, 5, 6) is currently the dominant
browser, and most users are displaying 800x600 pixels
or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors.
(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 you allow weeds to block out
the sun and take over your garden, it will be destroyed.
Attracting and keeping web site visitors, means continually
adding new information (i.e. latest news), deleting
irrelevant, outdated information and removing broken
links.
Continuous maintenance of your web site is crucial to
attracting and retaining visitors. If you don’t have time to do
it yourself, hire a Web Gardener (Web Designer), to keep your
site looking fresh, clean and fast loading.
Herman Drost is a Certified Web Site Designer (CIW),
owner and author of iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design, Hosting, and Promotion Packages.
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more
original articles at: subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read
more of his in-depth articles at: www.isitebuild.com/articles
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