Eight Common Web Mistakes that Website Designers Make when Designing
Whether or not you are a designer or would-be designer, do pay attention to these mistakes. They are what distinguish the professional from the amateur. They will also help or hinder your website?s placements on search engine listings. And, they will determine whether or not your visitors stay for a time at or leave - never to return - your website.
MISTAKE #1: Huge graphic files, along with too many graphics. These are the culprits that slow the downloading of a website. Resize the images and lower the resolutions before uploading to the website. Visitors have no patience for waiting to see your website.
MISTAKE #2: Confusing navigation. If visitors and/or the search engine spiders (that visit and index your website) can?t easily find their way around your website, they will leave as fast as a click of the mouse. I love using roll-over buttons, but also realize that for the spiders I need to post text-based links - usually at the bottom of the pages.
MISTAKE #3: The lack of a unique title for each and every page. I have a search-engine-guru friend who stresses the fact that so many pages lack this important feature. Without a title, your website pages will have little or no chance of showing up in the major search engines. When we include keywords in our titles, we increase our chances of top listings. These are super important because no one will find your website just because you have built it.
MISTAKE #4: The use of ?Mystery Meat.? Vincent Flanders and Dean Peters in their Web Pages that Suck books compare websites that are confusing - you don’t know what they are about or where they are going - to mystery meat (meat disguised by gravy, etc.). Be obvious - most users are not into guessing what it’s all about. They may surmise that we don’t know either.
MISTAKE #5: Using Flash Intros for the home or landing pages. Even though these can be quite clever and design-rich, most web-surfers I know and talk with, hate them. They take time to load and often produce confusion and ?mystery meat.? It is more expedient to use content that introduces you and/or your website to your visitor.
MISTAKE #6: No or little attention to the use of keywords. It used to be that we would load our meta tags with keywords and a description of what our website was all about. We should still do this, but most of the search engines don?t rely on these today. It is imperative that we use the important keywords throughout our website?s content.
MISTAKE #7: Adding animation for effect. In the beginning, everyone thought this was fun and cute. Maybe for a youngster?s website if used cleverly. But, animation gets old fast. It is like having a blinking neon sign outside your motel room?s window.
MISTAKE #8: Not using alt tags. Alt tags describe your graphics. They are especially for those visitors who have either turned off the graphics or who are using a reader program for the visually or aurally impaired. I find them to also be helpful in describing an object you want your visitors to click on.
If you avoid these eight MISTAKES, you will have a good start to a successful website.
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Chris King is a professional website creator / designer, storyteller, writer, free agent, and fitness instructor. You will find her business website at http://www.creativekeys.biz where you can sign up for her monthly Internet Tips E-zine. In addition visit Chris? information website at http://www.creativekeys.net and her blog at http://www.curiositycubed.blogspot.com |
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Guidelines on Making a Designing a Good Website.
Just when you thought that you have the coolest website design in the World Wide Web, you just realize that everything has been wrong all along. You?re not ranking well in search engines, and you?re not driving the right kind of traffic from your target market. Simply put, your products and services are not availed, and you?re not gaining the profit you?ve wanted.
Top 5 Website Design Mistakes People Do
It doesn?t mean that because you?re practically good in layout and art, you?re already a master with regards to website design. Hence, if you want to make sure that you can hit the target, take note of the following mistakes in website design:
1. Your website isn?t just compatible with a lot of Website browsers. One of the foremost reasons why your website design doesn?t click at all is because it won?t show up with majority of Internet browsers. Keep in mind that there are many types that can be utilized by Internet users. Classic examples include Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Crazy Browser. Thus, it only means that if you want to make sure that you can reach out to as many potential customers as possible, your website should show up in all of them. Before you upload your website, do some testing first so you can already correct possible problems.
2. You are simply using too much Flash. There seems to be a wrong notion when it comes to websites. A lot of website designers these days believe that one of the best ways to the heart of their target market is to incorporate a lot of Flash and other animated images into their site. Though they never fail to capture the initial fancy of anyone, these techniques have their own drawbacks. First, they can slow down the download time of your web page, which, unfortunately, can make Internet users impatient. Second, search engine spiders read texts, not images. Hence, it becomes harder for you to get indexed when you use a lot of Flash.
3. Fonts are not friendly to Internet users. Besides the overall layout of your web pages, you also have to take into consideration the font that you are going to use. The usual mistake in website design is using very small fonts, which makes content very inconvenient for Internet users to read. Sometimes they are frozen, which means you cannot adjust their sizes. You should ensure that your font is readable by complementing them with the background. According to studies, the best combination is using yellow texts over dark background.
4. Content doesn?t match the theme of the website. Surprisingly, there are website designers who are making website content their second priority. They are very difficult to scan, they are too long with no proper white spaces, and that they seem to be forced to fit in just one page. The bottom line is Internet users are finding it truly difficult to get the information that they truly need.
5. web pages are not search-engine friendly. If you?re not taking care of your headline tags, not adding meta tags in each of your web pages, or if you?ve been stuffing a lot of keywords in your websites
, then you will surely not gain the favor of search engines.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Mahoney is a freelance author who writes about various technology related subjects. For more information about John visit his website:www.techstore.ie
