Tuesday, October 16, 2007

7 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not planning your website

Before you start creating your website design, you must know, and be very clear about your purposes and goals for your website.

* Who your website is intended for
* What benefits can your website give to the intended group
* What you want the intended group to do as a result of visiting your website

Only with a well-defined purposes and goals, then you can clearly and directly convey your message to your intended group through your website.

2. Using too many colors and font styles

Keep your website design to no more than 3 colors and font styles. Using too many colors and font styles confuse your website visitors.

Think through these:

* How long would a confuse visitor stay in your website?
* What is the chance of this visitor returning to your website?
* Will this visitor recommend your website to his friends?


Your website design has to be pleasant to the eyes of your visitors to keep them surfing in your website.

3. Contact information not placed in an easily seen location

The 100% safe way is to use a ‘contact us’ button. The ‘contact us’ button is used so commonly that hardly any visitor can miss it. Place the ‘contact us’ button on all your web pages. If you are selling, offer your visitors multiple ways to connect to connect to you at their convenience.

* Through phone
* Through email
* Through on-line support
* Your office address


4. Information out of date

When your visitors see any out of date information in your website, it reflects poorly on you. Your website is a direct reflection of you and your credibility. When they see your website as good, they are inclined to trust your website.
Every single bit of information counts. Always update your website promptly whenever information changes. Do not run the risk of losing the trust of your visitors unnecessary.

5. Broken Links

Broken links is a hyperlink that leads to web page that does not exist. In most cases when you click a broken link you will see the Error 404 page.

Test-run your website and fix-up any broken links. When you do an update to your website, test-check your website to ensure all links works.

6. Orphan Pages

Orphan pages are web pages with no links pointing to them.
One quick and easy way to solve this problem is to put a link to ‘Home’ on all your web pages.

7. Slow loading times

Do not overload your website with images and applets. Not only does it slow down your web pages loading time, it turns away your visitors.

Source : Tips & Tricks: Website Design tips & mistakes

2 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Hey great article.Very good points,thanks for sharing.I completely agree with you web design mistakes may cost you dearly,if you are not careful.There are many website design mistakes to be avoided if you want your website to be a success.