Stupid HTML Email Design Mistakes

Ben Chestnut make focus of web Designers at silly design mistakes when they try to create HTML emails.

Mistake #1: Not designing for preview panes
Mistake #2: Assuming images will work
Mistake #3: Too many images, not enough text
Mistake #4: Not testing in different email programs
Mistake #5: Neglecting your footer
Mistake #6: Too fancy-schmancy

He also give Tips to deal with these Design mistakes.
Read at HTML Email Design Mistakes. Web designer need to pay special attention to the tips Ben gives to avoid each of these mistakes.

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 Information out of date

When your visitors see any out of date information in your website, it reflects poorly on you.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

How to Avoid the 12 Common Web Design Mistakes

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 Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of iSiteBuild.com
Low Cost Hosting and Site Design

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The 7 Deadly Sins Of Web Design

Sin 1 - Starfield backgrounds

You know the sort – zillions of tiny white pixels glinting back at you from behind the text. Beautiful. Not! In a galaxy far, far away, in a time long, long ago people thought this was cool. It’s not. It sucks and people who use it should be shot.


Sin 2 - Anything that moves.

Okay, that’s maybe a little bit harsh – let me zero in on something more specific - animated cursors. I know 12 year-old kids that think they’re crap. Wise up and lose the Homer Simpson cursor that leaves a wake of donut crumbs behind it as it moves across the screen. Please, I beg you, destroy them all!

Sin 3 - Fading Page Changes.

You’ve not seen these? Oh honestly – they’re wonderful. You click on a link to get to your chosen section and then suddenly the whole ass of the website morphs up into itself before re-appearing like a re-constituting Captain Kirk being beamed back into existence. Supreme. Whoever invented this deserves a medal. Ideally a medal that is extremely heavy, irremovable and is presented during a mid-ocean ceremony..

Sin 4 - Wide Load Websites.

You know the ones. You’re just getting into a sentence and then suddenly you realise that the last quarter of the sentence is not on your monitor – it’s extended into your kitchen somewhere and you need scrollbar shenanigans of Herculean proportions just to get to it. Wide load websites? Give them a wide berth.

Sin 5 - Designed By The Criminally Insane.

Words escape me:
http://www.chipotle.com

Sin 6 - Reflective Ripple Effects.

Absolute classic this one, I would be doing the Internet world a disservice if I left it out. You must have seen these in action – you come across a website (usually a personal one on free webspace) and there’s a picture depicting a tranquil scene, normally, though not always, containing a river or lake in it. And then the really tacky bit – the owner has lifted a bit of code from somewhere that makes the lower portion of the image appear as if it is rippling. The effect makes you feel like you’re having a water cannon loaded with chocolate ice-cream fired down your throat – it’s quite amusing and good fun for the first 2 seconds but you soon start to feel sick and dizzy wondering if there’s an off-button within reach…

Sin 7 - “Catch-Me-If-You-Can” Navigation.

Truly an invention of the devil this one. You can’t make head nor tail of what the little blobs on the navigation bar are supposed to be so you hover your mouse over them. But oh no – getting a description or hover-over clue now would be too easy. So instead the whole navigation bar starts scrolling past your mouse.
The more you move your cursor to catch up with the section you wanted to click on the faster everything starts spinning. Before you know it you’ve got a migraine, a sore wrist from moving your mouse too much and one less hour of your life left. If you’ve never witnessed scrolling, moving, “Catch-Me-If-You-Can” navigation just thank your lucky starfield backgrounds..

So remember people – don’t have nightmares and don’t commit any of the above cardinal sins!

Author : Matt Frenk
Source : http://www.e-articles.info/e/a/title/The-7-Deadly-Sins-Of-Web-Design/