When it comes to your website, additional attention should be paid to every minute detail to make certain it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven essential rules of thumb to observe to make certain your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages in Web design are the first pages you see whenever you arrive at a website. They normally possess a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click right here to enter”. In reality, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors possess a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your website up front with out 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 valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your guests feel that they wish to buy instead of being pushed to purchase.

3) Possess a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a easy and extremely straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will understand how to use it. Remain away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus. If your guests don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your website.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When guests are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make certain they know which component from the site they’re in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse related information or navigate to any section of the website effortlessly. Do not confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a lengthy time at your website, reading your content, you will wish to make certain 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.

Lorena Harley is a Web design related content writer. Check our her articles at E-articles.info.