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When you land on a new website, what makes you immediately hit the back button? For me, it is tasteless music with no way to turn it off.
Signs of Webmaster Newbies
All of us have been “newbies” at one point in our webmastering lives. We scoured the javascript sites, the dhtml sites and graphics sites for cool stuff that we thought would make our sites look impressive.
You can generally spot a first timer’s website right off the bat because the webmaster adds a smorgasboard of javascripts, animated gifs and other components to the site, thinking it makes the site look technologically advanced. This only makes a site look amateur.
Creating an Amateur Image
You might have a brick and mortar business that’s been around for the last decade, with tons of satisfied customers.On the Internet, your visitors are meeting you for the first time.To establish trust, you want to have a professional image. When designing your website, here are some things to avoid so that your business does not look amateur or like a fly-by-night operation:
- Dark, heavy backgrounds with hard-to-read fonts – For a business website, it’s best to use a plain white background and black text so that your visitors can read it easily. Some first timers are tempted to have “artistic” backgrounds with different colored text fonts. Not only is this hard to read, but if you have a product line, it is difficult to make pictures of your product line blend in with the background.
- Pages that are larger than the browser screen – There’s nothing more irritating that trying to read a web page that scrolls across the screen. The majority of web users use 1024 x 768 as their desktop resolution. Try to remain within those confines.
- Sound effects – Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music, but even if you discovered music that appeals to every single person alive, don’t make it automatically load on your site. With a music site, there are scripts that allow the user to click play and listen at his or her free will. This applies to audio advertisements or other background sound effects — have a pause button or an off button.
- “Cool” effects – About 8 or 9 years ago, it was real “cool” to have a flash presentation on the index page. Everyone was doing this. This does not help establish your online reputation. Flash introductions take a lot of effort to create and in the end, many are just downright stupid. These introductions take a long time to load and most people will not view them. Other components that beginners think are flashy include scrolling text, animated images and page fading effects. I added these types of things when I first started out, thinking it made me look talented. However, the harsh reality is that these effects are a wate of time and a turnoff. I’ve seen some sites, designed by supposed design specialists, where the links scroll by really fast and you have to “aim and shoot” just to be able to click a link. Don’t bother adding these effects. People visiting your site are looking for products or information, and are not there to look at animations that will give them a headache.
- No clear navigation scheme – Many people enter a website by the interior pages, not at the home page. You should give your visitors a way to easily click through your site. Left and top menus are the most popular and are therefore familiar to your visitors. Regardless of where you decide to place your menu, make sure that it is in the same place throughout your site. A surefire indicator of an amateur web design is the absense of a navigation menu.
- No search feature – Particularly if you have a large product line that you are selling or if you have a content rich site, always include a search box to help your visitors. If you don’t know how to do this, try Google’s free search box or another quality free service.This makes your site “user friendly” and demonstrates that you care about your visit’rs experience.
- “Secret” prices - If you’re selling products, include the price. Don’t try to force your visitor to go through the shopping cart process to find out what the cost will be — many of them won’t do it, anyway.
- Policies – An amateur site will not include privacy policies, terms of use and, when selling products or services, returns and shipping policies. You should also provide contact information, particularly if you are selling products or services.
- Under construction pages – “Under construction” or “coming soon” pages are a surefire way to announce that you’re an amateur. If you are not done with a page yet, do not link to it. Add a link to your menu or sitemap at such time as the page is completed.
- No online shopping cart – If you are selling a product, provide a way for people to purchase your product online. When people are looking to buy something online, they usually intend to buy it immediately. Chances are, they don’t want to mail a check or money order. If you don’t have a merchant account, consider paypal or, in the case of digital products, consider using a service such as Clickbank.There are free shopping carts available for people who already have a merchant account, such as Mals-e.com, which also provides an affiliate program option.
What’s Your Beef?
Newbie or pro, you can voice your opinion about what makes a stinking website at the NotGuru’s survey about poor website design. If you’re looking for software, giveaways and other things to help your fledgling online business, the NotGuru blog provides plenty of resources. Take the site design survey today and feel free to submit your comments – the results are quite interesting.
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