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Eliminate Nine Roadblocks to a
Successful Web Site
The purpose of a business web site is to
promote your business and sales and to educate potential customers. You
wish to stimulate and hold the visitor’s interest in your product. In
order to do this, the general public must be able to find, read, and
understand what you are displaying.
Here are 9 major problem areas that you can
avoid:
- A “splash”
page- An opening page that just has a graphic, very little or no
text, and you must click to enter the rest of the site. The fewer
clicks a visitor makes to get to the subject, the better. A suggested
guideline is that you must grasp the visitor’s attention within 10
seconds or they will go on to another site. A splash page also
hampers search engines, since it has no text. Search engines prefer
pages with good written content relevant to your topic.
- Flash, video,
music, animations- Many web designers feel the need to show their
coding expertise by adding these and other time-consuming extras that
do not add function to your message. If you must use these, offer the
visitor the option of clicking a button to activate them.
- Large graphics
that load slowly with no text to read while you wait for the
pictures to open. Similar to the splash page. People get disgusted
and click on to something else. Check the original load time for your
pages. Avoid links and text that are made into pictures.
- Frames.
You can create a part of the screen, a “frame,” that never changes.
It might contain a menu (navigation links) or icons that will take the
visitor to other pages within the site. These frames may appear to be
good functionally, but can cause problems. Frames hamper search
engines. Certain older web browser programs cannot view frames.
Viewers can no longer use the address bar to see where they are, and
they can't bookmark a frame. There are coding workarounds for these
problems, but why waste valuable design time and your visitor’s time
when simpler methods work as well or better?
- Use the right
color combinations and clear fonts. Many visitors have less than
perfect vision. Wrong colors and too busy backgrounds make the text
too difficult to read. So do too small a font (type-style) or a
too-ornate font. Only a handful of fonts are readable to most
browsers.
- Don’t try to
put too much information on one page. Keep backgrounds and
content simple and easy to navigate. If you try to promote too many
items on a single page it is very confusing and distracting.
- Content is
key. Once you get a visitor to your web site and catch their
attention, you wish to hold them. Express your message well and
clearly. Give the visitor clear and direct information for ordering
and for contacting you. Include a telephone number.
- Domain names
should be easy to remember, easy to type in, easy to spell. Avoid
dashes and underscores. A good domain name is one you can tell a
person you meet walking down the street and they will remember it when
they get home. Names higher in the alphabet are better for
directories and services that list alphabetically.
- Eliminate
prefixes. A web master can set up your site so that when you type
in the web address you do not have to type in the prefixes of
http:// and
www. That will give you an advantage so folks who do not type
in those prefixes can also find the site and not receive a “site not
found” message.
A web site is worthless if you can’t find it, but
also worthless if, when you do find it, you can’t read or understand
it. A site is less than worthless if it irritates your visitor and
potential customer and drives them away. Computers are frustrating to
many people. You want to make your site as easy to find, navigate, and
understand as possible. |
