| Top Web Hosting Provider of The Month: |
 |
| Visit Bluehost.com | Read Bluehost Review |
|
|
| >> Web Hosting Geeks // Web Hosting Articles // Web Design |
|
|
 |
The Top 8 Website Sins Part One
They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Your website then is the window to your business. What would a passerby think of your "window"? What does your website say about you? About your business? Does your website entice the visitor to pause and take a few moments to look around or does it confuse them so much they click past it without ever looking back. The goal of your website is to make the visitor stay until the desired visitor response has been achieved. That might be that they sign up for your newsletter, complete a survey or make a purchase. If surfer doesn't stay for more than a few moments then all your hard work is for nothing. There are 8 key factors that can prevent people from staying on your site. In extreme cases the key areas below can actually drive traffic away from your site. Sin #1 Provide Useful Content. People search for information online. To find that information they use search engines. They type in keywords or phrases to locate items, places or information they require or desire. Google, Yahoo and MSN go through their indexes and present the searcher with the best possible match for their information request. The searcher clicks on the links and visits a few sites. What happens if the searcher doesn't find relevant information once they get to the site? Yup they go right back to their previous search results and go elsewhere. Provide useful content. Don't scam the search engines. Don't churn out another site made up of copied search engine results. Your website is your business. Treat it like one. The two key rules for website content are: 1. Make it useful. 2. Make it easy to find on your site Sin #2 Slow Loading Sites If your site takes any longer than 30 seconds to load then the visitor is gone. Theywon't be back either. Ideally your website should load in 15 seconds or less. Web surfers will not wait around for your fancy graphics or flash demos to load. They'll get bored and move on. Do not use bitmap graphic files for logos or as part of your site design. They're ugly and take forever to load. Ensure that every single GIF and JPEG is optimized for faster loading. If you don't understand how to optimize graphic files for your site ask somebody to do it for you. It can cut your site loading time by 50%. Keep your site to 20% graphics and 80% text. Text loads faster and gives the web surfer something to read while your graphics are quickly loading in the background. Look at some of the most successful websites on the net - Google, Yahoo and Amazon. Graphically intensive? bsolutely not. These guys realize that every second they waste and visitor they lose is money out of their pocket. Sin #3 Poor Layout A visitor should be able to find what they need on your website in 3 clicks or less. Any more than that and you're losing valuable visitors and the potential income that involves. Your navigation menu should be easy to use and every single link must work properly. Don't just assume that all your links work - check them yourself. Use a sitemap on each and every one of your websites. Do not use fancy mouse pointers - the type with the fancy trails. Do not use complicated menu systems. Text should be legible but not huge. Change your screen resolution to 640 x 480 and 800 x 600. How does your website look now? Keep it simple. Imagine how a new Internet user would react to your website. Would they love it or hate it? Could a new visitor easily find the information they're looking for? If not then why not? Find the problems yourself and eliminate them in advance. Sin #4 Awful Color Schemes There's nothing worse then searching for hours for the information you need and then not be able to read it. You've all been there. You click on the search result and that's when the pain starts. You've just arrived at a page with a light blue background and yellow text. Or maybe it's red text on a black background or white text on a gray background. You stare at the site in disbelief that anybody could ever have thought such a color scheme would actually work. If you need guidance on how to choose colors for your website look at any magazine. Black or dark blue text on a white background is the simplest and most effective color scheme for text presentation. For your menus and other background colours bear the following in mind: Red is stimulating and agressive. Blue is peaceful and tranquil. Green is calm and refreshing. Yellow grabs peoples attention. Purple is wealthy and luxurious. Brown is solid and reliable. Orange is bright and optimistic. The colors you choose for your website can have a direct impact on how people react to your content or message. It can either attract them or repel them. The choice is yours. Continued in part 2 of The Top 8 Website Sins. This article was provided courtesy of Affiliate-Advocate.com where you'll find tons of information on online affiliate marketing
MORE RESOURCES:
Web-Design - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
10 seconds is all it takes? (How to grab the attention of your audience with your web site) FACT: 30 to 60% of visitors tend to drop off and click to another site when they are forced to click their mouse more often than necessary.FACT: People who use the internet are usually those who are always on-the-go and don't want to spend time figuring out how to navigate any web site. Will You Site be a BIG SUCCESS. 7 Reasons Why It Might Not! With so many new websites going up, it is hard sometimes to tell if your site will be a BIG SUCCESS or an unexpected flop? If you are unsure of whether or not your site will fly with visitors or crash and burn, this article is definitely for you. Now we all know the importance of great service, but if your website doesn't communicate this, then you could be headed for failure. The Key to Getting More Magic Shows Booked Online This article is the result of a conversation I had with a magician about his website. He wanted to know if I could build him a nice looking site that had his name and contact information on it. 7 Benefits of HTML Validation You may not bother with html validation or writing simple and clean code when designing your web site. Later you may find your site is slow loading, appears incorrectly in the main browsers and does not rank well for the major search engines. How to Design Website Which Google Likes Are you going to design or redesign new website or thinking for it, then first read below given points, which google likes in a website, Google Information for Webmasters.There are more than 80 factors of your website that are taken into consideration when determining the ranking of your website, Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Event Planning Must Include An Event Website As part of your event planning you should seriously consider registering a special event domain. That should in fact be the first step for your planning of any event. Tips on How to Design a Great Site Have you ever walked pass a shop that, for some reason, you just felt that you had to go in? Maybe it was the décor, or the window display, or the pretty girl, or a combination of all those but something in the shop called out to you, "Come in" and you just had to obey.In the online world, won't it be nice to have a site that buyers just had to buy from, despite themselves? Surfers will be drawn to the "Add to Cart" button that squealed, "Click me!" to them. Website Redesign for Existing Websites Does your website need a re-design? Here are some questions to ask yourself when you are looking for investing in your website redesign.1) Is your website fresh - Having a website fresh helps your visitors to stay on your website rather than skipping your website? When I mean fresh, fresh with content, Every website owner should have their website updated with latest content, Search engine spiders index new content and in turn your website will rank high on search engines. How to Make Your Site Attractive to Potential Link Partners Every now and then, I receive a link exchange request from someone who wants a link from my directory (my high-ranking directory directly accessible from the index page), and in exchange, they're willing to link to my page from one of their zillions of link pages about 18 jumps away from the home page. Needless to say, the proffered page has a Google PageRank of 0, and chances are it's not even indexed by any search engines. Web Site Professionalism? What Is It? Your web site should be-visitor friendly to navigatesearch engine friendly for the crawlersAutomated with ecommerce and subscription forms.. Why Content is King of Website Design If there's one thing that most web site developers can agree on, it's this: content is king.That's not, of course, to say that good design doesn't matter. The Secrets of The Shriekers I am constantly bombarded with all sorts of advertisements, single-page sites, and sites offering very little real content but some wonderful new "product" or "service" for sale that purports to make its customers wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.For the purposes of this article, let's refer to Amazing Formula (http://www. Web Site Templates and Their Benefits Unarguably, the most important part of your website is content. To draw in clients or customers, you need captivating content and search engines are blind to web design. Building An Effective Furniture Sales Web Site Web sites that feature products - especially furniture or other large items - require a careful balance of text and images to convey the value of each product.Let's face it. Creating Personal Web Sites (Part 2) This is the second part of a two-part article about creating a web site on the Internet and the tools that you will need to do it.Some basic terminology that you should take a look at before proceeding further:Web Page: A document that contains information created with the help of HTML. Creating Personal Web Sites This is a two-part article about creating a web site on the web and the tools that you need to do that.During the last decade we have truly entered the information age. Caveat Scriptor: Use the Advice of Those Who Know Before You Build a Site ~A man [woman] is a success if he [she] gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he [she] does what he [she] wants to do. Bob Dylan~I'm smart. How a Custom Designed Website Can Help Your Business Over the years, the internet has grown into a marvelous avenue to promote your business.In my last article, "Why Your Business Needs to Have an Internet Presence" (http://www. Maximising Web Site Viewability - Resolution This is my second article on maximising web site viewability. Analysing screen resolution data. If Content is King who is Queen? It's been said again and again, when it comes to getting people to visit your site (and stay there for more than 5 seconds), the quality of your content rules supreme. But once you've bowed to interest, saluted relevance and kow-towed to originality, who else must you pay homage to for recognition in the court of website stickiness?The two jewels in the crown of Presentation, for it is of course Presentation who is Queen, are structure and graphical design.
|
|
|
|
|
| © 2004 - 2008 "Web Hosting Geeks" | Web Hosting Reviews | Customer Reviews | RealMetrics Reviews | Hosting Articles | Directory | Partners | Contacts Over 7000 articles: web hosting, web development, domain names, ecommerce, web design, site promotion, ppc advertising, seo, site promotion and many others. Web hosting reviews, ratings and awards are not based on any incentives or commissions. Names and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. A direct link to Web Hosting Geeks (http://webhostinggeeks.com) must be provided in order to use any of the above information. Contact us for more info. Partners: Hosts by speed, Cheap Website Hosting, Free Website Hosting, Cheap Web Hosting, Top 10 Web Hosts, Top 10 Web Hosting Deals, Best Website Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Adult Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discussions, Dedicated Server Reviews, Best Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discounts, HostProfessor.com, rsuog, halyava, PHP Website Hosting Services, Web Hosting Reviews, Hosting Uptime, Best Web Hosting Reviews, Cheap Webhosting, Web Hosting, Flash Templates, CMS Templates, Web Hosting Reviews, Website Hosting Reviews, Web Hosting Providers, Best Web Hosting, Top Web Hosting, RSUOG Web Hosting |