Rules for Proper Website Design
Optimal performance is the number one priority in any website design. The existence of large, slow loading flash files on some website shows that some webmaster do not require the basic understanding if what constitutes an optimally designed website.
Follow these basic rules for website design when creating your site and you can be assured of an optimally designed website you can be proud of.
1) Never use splash pages
Splash pages makes up the first impression people have of a website. They are dazzling pages that have images with words such as “welcome or “click here to enter. The unfortunate thing is splash pages actually takes away attention from the real purpose of the website, and often frustrates users with their slow loading time. This page serves a good purpose to entertain but if website conversion is your goal, it can be a big barrier for you to achieve your goals.
2) Use any form of banner advertisements sparing
Some sites have a number of these advertising banners displayed around the page but the most prominent place is at the top. Banner ad tends to be ignored by most web surfers so it is a total majority of the web surfers so they would a total waste of your website space. Instead add useful contents and add your affiliate links skillfully into the body of the text so that it would seem like a natural part of your text and not an advertisement.
3) Keep a simple and clear navigation
The navigation should be made very simple that even a young child can manage to find their way around. Do not use any form of menus that will complicate users, drop downs and multi-tiers are not a good idea. When navigation becomes hard and frustrating, they will leave your site for good and you will probably never get them back. Have a sitemap added to the website design to help them find what they are looking for.
4) There needs to be a clear indicator where the user is on the website
Give them a clear view of where they are now and how to get to where they want to be. This way, they can head to the right information they are looking for. Ensure every page of your website has its title and a tracking system is used to allow visitors to see where they have been and where they are. Any type of confusion drives your visitors away.
5) Do not use audio
To make your visitors stay longer, avoid the use of excessive music. Sound files should be used sparingly. It may be a cool thing to include some music but do give your users some form of control such as muting ability or volume control. If you use all these tricks of website design effectively, you will in time that your visitors will likely return again and again to your site.
How to Kill your Website Before Web Design
Websites can fail even before a single line of code is ever written. The success or failure of your website will very much depend on the competence or incompetence – of your web designer & how dedicated or lame they are in preparing your website for your market. 95% of sites will never make page 1 or page 2 of SERPs. Here are the worst web design planning mistakes in order:
(Please see: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009 for further information & resources)
1 – No Keyword Research – Attempting to write a website without keyword research is effectively going blind. Good keyword research usually reveals many surprises and potential niche keywords that could be used to drive traffic. Poor use of keywords is the number 1 reason for website failure and it’s totally avoidable through the use of keyword research tools – many of which are free to use.
2 – Lack of Competitor Research – without competitor research you won’t know whether your page 1 competitors have 30 or 30,000 backlinks, and you won’t know if their websites have 3 or 300 pages. The term ‘mortgage’ has 189 million pages listed in Google – moneysupermarket.com who are usually number 1 has 306,000 backlinks – hence it would be unrealistic for anyone other than a team of professional SEMs to compete. Simple research takes minutes and could save months of wasted effort and wasted cash.
3 – Same as the Next Guy – By making your website the same as everyone else you are not telling your visitor what’s different, hence you are setting your website for failure. Plan to be different and insure you convey your differences quickly – think about improving your: content, visitor experience, site navigation & any special offers you might have when planning your website – making this effort in the planning stage really pays dividend later
4 – Poor Content Quality – if you have done your competitor research then you will know how much quality content you have to write to match your competitors. Both quality & quantity of text content is important – paragraphs should be no more than a few lines long, headings should contain your researched keywords. Planning this in advance will help improve your website ranking & conversion rates.
5 – No Page Planning – lack of page planning will inevitably result in lower search engine ranking. Insure that you use well researched keywords in: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & your paragraphs. Your menus should be easy to follow and your important headings should be high up the page. Keep your page layouts consistent and if you are writing a large website use scripting language such as ASP or PHP. Wherever possible build CMS so pages can be added or removed easily.
6 – No Plan for Marketing – most of us by now know that the myth of ‘write a website & the visitors will come’ is not true. The objective for most websites should be to aim for Page1 or Page2 of search engines. By doing your competitor research you will know how big a hill you have to climb un order to match/beat the competition. Being unrealistic with the time/budget for this task will make even the best website fail.
7 – Poor Choice of Hosting – cheap hosting deals overseas may not necessarily be good for your website as many search engines today use ‘Geo Targeting’ in some manner in their ranking algorithms and you visitors may find your website slower than your competitors. Where possible use host with servers located in your home country & look at live review sites before making a decision. If your site is geared for high traffic and/or overseas trade then use a dedicated server and insure you host has good peering agreements with the countries that you are likely to do business with. Always check your host’s IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are.
8 – Poor Colour Choice – your website is not the place to express yourself – you have less than 3 seconds to make your first impression – hence choose a colour scheme that is perfect for your website – try colour matching your photos/logos/artwork & avoid drab/luminous colours. Take care when designing websites geared for other countries as certain colours have cultural significance & insure that your colours are web safe. Poor planning in this area is will make your website look amateur.
9 – Choosing Strange Fonts – could make your site hard to read especially for people with poor vision. Wherever possible use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica. If you must use alternative fonts insure the text is large enough, clear & it matches your website theme.
10 – Website Name & Suffix – choose a domain that contains your keywords & select the correct domain suffix (top level domain) – whilst using your keywords in your domain is not essential, it helps with towards your page ranking. Choosing the wrong suffix will not help you achieve listings in the right territory. Common UK TLD’s:
.com – ecommerce or commercial website (UK &/or International)
.co.uk – uk corporate website
.net – often used by web hosts – large network
.biz – for business-to-business websites
.org.uk – organisation, group or charity
.info – informational site .name – usually used for individuals
.name – for an individual or group
.ltd.uk – UK ltd company
The 5 Biggest Website Design Tips
Optimal performance is the number one priority in any website design. It is a huge mistake to assume the belief those visitors needs to be entertained with fancy flash works which usually requires long loading time, when the truth is exactly the opposite.
These are the rules of a good website design.
1) Try to avoid using splash pages
The splash pages are the fancy pages you see when you enter a website. These are elaborately fancy pages with lavish designs and images along with words such as “welcome to our website Usually, they are pages of elaborate graphics that includes words such as “welcome or “click here to enter the site. They are merely fancy additions without any real functions at all. This fanciful addition only serves to confuse the visitor who will likely leave your website immediately if loading time takes too long.
2) Reduce the number of banners on your site
These are usually large adverts placed at the top of the web page but can also be at the bottom too. Banner ad tends to be ignored by most web surfers so it is a total majority of the web surfers so they would a total waste of your website space. There is a better way to add contents instead of using banner is by giving them useful information and then add their affiliate links so that they would seem natural.
3) Provide your site with an easy navigation system
The navigation should be made very simple that even a young child can manage to find their way around. Do not use any form of menus that will complicate users, drop downs and multi-tiers are not a good idea. There are so many websites competing for attention, if your menus make it difficult for them, they will leave. Your website design should include the construction a sitemap that will make it easy for them to find what they want.
4) Make it clear where the user is at the moment
Give them a clear view of where they are now and how to get to where they want to be. This way, they can easily navigate the exact section they want. When each link that has been visited is marked in some way form the ones that are fresh, visitors can easily know which is fresh and which is fresh and which is not. If you confuse your visitors in any way they will leave.
5) Follow this simple rule- do not use audio
If you want your visitors to stay a long time and read the contents, do not irritate em with your audio. Whenever you decide to use sound, be sure not to let it loop continuously because this a huge cause of irritation to people browsing sites. Adding audios may seem cool but provide some form of user control such as muting ability or volume control so that your visitors can adjust accordingly. If you wish for the visitors to return to your site, learn to apply all these website design rules and you can reap the benefits of long term traffic.
Internet Marketing Hints You Don’t Want To Do Without
Today there are more and more people who are realizing that search engine optimization is so important. However, if you’re just getting started with your own website online, you may be wondering what the basics of SEO really are. Well, you’ll find that there are a variety of important things you need to do related to search engine optimization if you are going to be successful. So, if you want to reap success, here are some of the top SEO tips that you need to keep in mind.
#1 ? Learn as much as possible about SEO. This is important. There is a lot to know and there are a number of good resources out there which can get you started in your search engine marketing efforts. Read up and you’ll be well prepared to make the most of search engine marketing.
#2 ? Find the right tool for the job. You have a lot of choices when it comes to search engine optimization and some will better meet your needs than others. You should definitely make use of these tools ? you’ll save yourself a lot of time in the process. Evaluate some of the SEO tools out there and use them as you build your site. You’ll have an easier time getting into the Google top 10 if you build your site with SEO in mind.
#3 ? Make your URL geared towards SEO. This is important. Search engines look at your URL and give it a lot of importance. If at all possible, use your keywords in the URL of your website. However, don’t get carried away with this and make your URL difficult to remember. When building the links from page to page on your website, use hyphens instead of underscores; hyphens are considered to be spaces by search engines.
Tip #4 – Research Your Keywords in the Beginning – When you are starting out on your website, it’s important that you research your keywords in the beginning. You don’t want to build your site around certain keywords, only to have to go back and replace them all because you find out that they are not the best keywords for your site. Take the time to actually do your research on keywords. There are several great keyword tools out there that will help you to find the best keywords that are related to the niche that you are trying to get started in.
#5 ? Give Pay Per Click advertising a try. One of the best ways to bring in traffic to your brand new site is to use pay per click ads. This is a very cost effective means of bringing in traffic ? you only pay when you get a visitor to your site via one of the ads. Google’ pay per click ads are probably the best choice. Google’s AdWords is a great tool for SEO and traffic generation. It’s not free, but it will get you results and is well worth the cost.
This article about paid seo tips is brought to you by webpositionexpert.
Marketing In Difficult Times: Improve Website Traffic
Marketing online can be complicated. So many segments, audiences, and offers, finding the right Internet marketing mix is more difficult than ever before. With the help of some online tools, a good strategy, and careful management of your campaigns, you can significantly improve your marketing results even in a difficult economy.
If you are an established business with a well designed website, you may be wondering what has happened in the last few month. Many websites are seeing less traffic or fewer conversions. No matter what ails you, all websites can benefit from a more granular analysis to determine better ways of keeping website visitors on the page or converting into customers.
I have developed a number of methods to best leverage the traffic I receive to my website. With smaller budgets for PPC and other forms of online advertising, getting visitors to convert is more important than ever. These techniques are simple to implement and can really improve conversions.
Provide a free report on your website. When visitors come your website, be sure to have a free offer they can access by providing their name and email address. This allows you to capture information about your users in exchange for helpful or valuable information. After they have provided their email, you can communicate with them regularly.
Use an auto responder. Communicate with your website visitors on a regular basis. This is a great way to convert your browsers into customers. After users sign up for your free information or download, use the auto responder to send messages on a regular basis. Auto responders are very inexpensive and can provide a significant boost to sales.
Create a reason to come back. Another great technique is to change up your free offers on a weekly basis. This is easily done if you offer a course covering a new topic each week. Let users know that by coming back to the site, they can access new information, transcripts from a recent conference call, or access to expert information.
Lastly, think about starting a newsletter. Newsletters are great for opening up a dialogue with your users and helping them solve problems or issues they may be facing. Create topical articles that are relevant and leverage your list to increase sales. Newsletters are inexpensive to produce and improve relationships with customers.
In a tough economy, you need to do what you can to get more from your website visitors. The only way to do this successfully is to first offer something of value. After you’ve made the first move, many browsers will be willing to share some information about themselves. Put your thinking cap on and consider new ways to attract website visitors. Once you have found something that works, stick with it.
With an added focus on traffic and conversions, you can easily leverage the visitors you already receive to your website.
