When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first page you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Important Rules in Website Design
Posted by mirage at 2:08 PM
Labels: website | Hotlinks: DiggIt! Del.icio.us
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4 Comments:
Hey buddy! Nice blog that you maintain here.. I just chanced upon your blog surfing the blogosphere. I was thinking.. you could try out some interesting widgets on your page and spice it up with some great pictures. E.g try out the poster widget on http://www.widgetmate.com with your relevant keywords. It has some of the best images i have ever seen.
I noticed your domain is not the name of your site. You can instantly boost traffic by buying a domain name. I used to have a blog which was fairly popular in the tech news circle. Its name was also My Tech News Blog. I therefore bought the domain mytechnews.net I have since closed down my blog and put that domain up for sale. Just type it in your address bar for details on purchasing it. It still has a lot of traffic which would be redirected to your site. In the last 2 weeks it has had over 1400 views and I have made nearly a dollar from the sedo ads on it. If you put targeted ads on it you can make much much more. I used to make about $100/month when it was in operation.
Is it possible for you to take a look at my sites WiiPlanet and iJeff for recommendations on improving viewership?
WiiPlanet
iJeff Blog
These are some good tips. I have to be honest, if website owners would think about what they would like to see instead of what they think is cool, they would not create "splash" pages. My other favorite is music. This one is great. I have a real estate website and I can just see someone sitting at their cubicle while at work searching homes for sale and BAM! loud music eminates from the cubicle. Not a good thing!
BTW, nice looking blog you have.
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