Web Site Development – Consider Top 20 Dos And Don’ts To Create Highly Successful Sites
Excellent web design is critical to your website’s success. If the design is effective, it would increase traffic to the site and also increase sales. On the other hand, a bad design can discourage website usage despite exceptional products and service.
Consider the following dos and don’ts when designing your website to turn it into a profit center for your business:
Top 10 Dos of Website Design
1. Do provide easy search and navigation capabilities. Your website design should enable quick and easy search of required information. All pages also need to have the important links to information that would enhance the user experience. Any useful information should not be more that two or three clicks away else you risk losing the user. The faster your customers can navigate through your website and find what they are looking for, the more likely you are to get repeat visits from them.
2. Do keep your website content simple and easy to understand. Develop clear, effective and to-the-point content to grab customer attention and help them comprehend better what you have to offer. Your content should address customer problems and suggest efficient solutions for them.
3. Do give your site a consistent look and feel. If you want your site to look professional, it is necessary to be consistent in fonts, colors and layout of pages. Linked pages especially should use consistent font styles, graphics and colors.
4. Do make sure your website works well on multiple browsers such as Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer, for greatest impact. If you plan to make your site accessible on mobile phones then include testing on mobile browsers to your test plan.
5. Do include your contact information on every page.
List your physical address including other contact information like phone and email on the ‘Contact Us’ page. It is also crucial to list phone and email at the bottom of each page for easy accessibility.
6. Do ensure that each page has the most relevant information at the top of the page so that the user knows exactly what the page is about and if they want to scroll down or not.
7. Do use high-quality pictures and graphics. Keep a good balance between the image resolution and time to load them. High quality graphics will attract users but would be a turn off if they take too long to load.
8. Do use bullets, icons, boldface and italicized words, color and headline to attract customer attention to important segments of your content.
9. Do understand that security of the web site is important and generates confidence Make your website secure for visitors. Privacy policy also needs to be readily available to the users.
10. Do use clear and concise page titles. Users see web page title in search results and clear effective titles can significantly increase the traffic coming to your website.
Top 10 Don’ts of Website Design
1. Don’t clutter your website. Cluttered web pages are tough to read and navigate. Restrict the amount of information you provide on each page. Each page should ideally deal with only one topic, product or category. If you plan to place advertisement on the site, make sure it does not interrupt or you would lose the visitors.
2. Don’t make excessive use of bandwidth consuming audio and video features, such as graphics, animations and photos. These may be slow to download and are irritating if the customer has to wait too long for them.
3. Don’t make content difficult to read by using offbeat text fonts or color combination. Also restrict the number of distracting visual on the site.
4. Don’t add any information or features to the site that do not serve the expected purpose. Adding content and features on your website that don’t carry any meaning for visitors is a waste of time and bandwidth.
5. Don’t let the content and links on your website become outdated. Regularly refresh the content and update the links to relevant information. Outdated links are annoying and can seriously affect your business reputation.
6. Don’t stuff the site with technical terms or jargon unless your website is designed to address the needs of a small segment of technical people. Moreover, do not use conflicting information in your site. In addition to confusing customers, such information gives a highly negative and unprofessional image to your website.
7. Don’t use flashing icons and text as that can distract browsers and might be detrimental to the popularity of your website.
8. Don’t stuff up your web pages with advertisements. Also, keep a check on pop-ups as they can irritate shoppers.
9. Don’t include introductory advertisements on the first page before your web content appears. Such advertisements put customers in a sore mood even before they look at your content.
10. Don’t just brag about your company’s achievements. Provide your shoppers easy to digest information and back it up with references and customer testimonials to enable them to judge your performance.
Follow the dos and stay clear of the don’ts of website design to build an effective site, and greatly enhance the chances of successful web entrepreneurship. Daljeet Sidhu is the author of this article.




September 5, 2010
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Posted by dismart
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