8 Top Website Design Issues by Robert C Potter

Does your Web site keep people captivated, or does it send them
fleeing as soon as they get to your home page? Do you offend your
visitors with the following annoyances?

1. Automatic audio. Always give people the option of
listening to any music or recorded information you have on your
site. Don’t automatically assume that your visitors will be
captivated by your voice or your music. Always give them the option
of turning it off.

2. Spinning, flashing, or blinking ads. Flashing banner
ads are the equivalent of a carnival barker trying to lure people
into a sideshow. You don’t need to shout to people to get you
message heard. Keep you ads limited and your content abundant.

3. Unnavigable sites. Do not expect visitors to jump
through “link hoops” to get to your information. They won’t. Make
your product, price, or service, clear, precise, and easy to find.
Design your content so that even elementary school children can
understand your site.

4. Excessive pop-ups. In this day and age, pop-ups are
inevitable. But if visitors have to close multiple pop-ups to get
to your site, they may leave and never come back. The same applies
for “fly-in” or “hover” that bounce across the screen. If you have
to use anything, incorporate a pop-up that loads when a visitor
leaves your site.

5. A page full of dead links and 404 error messages. Keep
your links up to date and take down the links that are no longer
active.

6. Dark text on a dark background. Don’t
expect your readers to work to read your content, because they
won’t. They will leave and find the information they need
elsewhere.

7. Use Flash judiciously. Unless you have a film site or
a product that requires a detailed visual description, resist using
Macromedia’s Flash for e-commerce. If you are using your site to
sell a product, use high-quality, fast-loading photos and creative
descriptions of each item. If you must use Flash, make your files
as small and fast-loading as possible.

8. Solid blocks of text with no breaks between
paragraphs. That may work in print, but it will not fly on the
Web. People don’t read online content the way they read offline –
they skim. Imposing blocks of dark text will put off your readers.
Make your content clear and concise. Break up your paragraphs, and
use plenty of white space.

If your site makes any of the mistakes enumerated above, it is
not too late. Make the necessary changes as soon as you can. In
fact, if you haven’t redesigned your site in the last 6 to 12
months, you may be due for a redesign anyway. And make sure that
when you do redesign that you don’t fall afoul of any of
these rules. Make sure to read
Top 10 Web
Design Mistakes for more information on this topic. In
addition, for an overview, read
Develop an
Effective Small Business Web Site.

Robert C. Potter is a wholesale and retail surplus products
specialist and the author of “The Ultimate Guide To Products
For Resale.” You can find his 160 page e-book at productsforresale.com.

Article taken from Yahoo!

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-article-a-112162-m-3-sc-17-eight_top_web_site_design_issues-i