Web design tips that really work
Feeling overwhelmed and utterly confused about what makes a good website? Technology is changing at such a rate that it is very difficult for a web designer to keep up with current trends and best practices – let alone someone who is not in the industry.
Here are some handy tips that will help your website to perform well, minimise viewer frustrations and ultimately boost your business.
1. Your website needs to have a clear message. The user should know what you do within seconds, and quickly be able to find your points of difference – whether it is price, quality, range – whatever. I have noticed that the more technology advances and makes creating websites “easier” – the more every website is starting to look the same. This is not good, my friend. Your website is quite often the only point of contact a potential customer will have – it needs to be clear, effective and memorable - with details and information easy to find.
2. Consider keywords when writing content for your website. Ranking highly in search engine results is a huge advantage and one of the easiest ways of boosting your ranking is to include all the keywords someone is likely to search for, within your content.
3. Don’t apply design elements and fancy widgets just because you like them. If they don’t serve a purpose, they don’t belong on your website. Too many times have I seen pointless animation, frilly fonts and cheesy stock photos when they serve no purpose at all and end up taking away from where the focus should be.
5. Get your navigation right. Put things in a logical place, not just strewn willy-nilly around your website. Make sure people have access to all major sections of your website from every page. Don’t have pages that you can only find by clicking around randomly. For example, if you have an online quote form, add it to your menu rather than just having it on the “products” page.
6. Don’t annoy your viewers. I am still seeing websites that resize browser windows, or even worse – they just don’t let you leave the site without clicking “yes, I really want to leave”. Why would you want your potential customers to leave annoyed at you? Also try to minimise the need to open new browser windows. Often popup blockers will cause issues anyway, but it is just not best practice.
7. Don’t make people sign up to your website (create an account) just to view content. They won’t do it. Recently a few online newspapers have stopped readers from reading articles unless they sign up for an account – and guess what – in most cases they lose over 70% of their readers.
8. Don’t collect people’s data and spam them without them expecting it. For example, if they create an account to buy a product but have not clicked “sign me up for the newsletter” or something to that effect, sending them bulk mail will really rub them the wrong way.
9. Building an entire website in Flash causes issues for some people. Yes, some people are still using their computer they purchased in 2003 and believe it or not, do not have the latest Flash Player installed. Also, search engine rankings are much tougher when you build the entire interface in Flash. And then – some mobile devices do not display Flash content at all.
10. Don’t surprise people with sounds. Seriously – stop it. Nothing will make someone leave your site faster. Having a little person pop up and tell you their life story when all you wanted to know was the price of a pair of shoes is really quite irritating. If you absolutely must have audio on your website, don’t have it start automatically – make the user click “play”.
11. Intro pages are annoying. One extra click and waiting 30 seconds for a flash animation to load is just not helpful. Wow people with the quality of your content, not the fact you paid some guy $80 to make your logo spin around in 3 Dimensions.
15. Be cautious of your colour scheme. Do not be tempted to have large blocks of copy in a bright colour – use colour sparingly for text. Whatever you do, do not put coloured text onto a coloured background of a similar tone (eg. red text on a blue background). Migraine inducing websites generally perform poorly.
17. For heaven’s sake – do a spell check. Poor spelling or grandma grammar will make your business look like a complete joke. Yes, people notice. Also do not overuse exclamation points every time you feel the need to stress a particular point!!!!
18. If you have PDF files for download, give people a bit of warning before you potentially crash their browser. “Download PDF” is enough – just don’t make it appear as though they are loading a html page when it’s about to launch Acrobat.
19. Horizontal scrolling is evil. Never, ever make a reader do it. Vertical scrolling is fine.
Well that’s all for now – more tips coming soon. I hope these were at least a tiny bit helpful.
