Roadblocks to Success

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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? 
  5. 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.
  6. 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. 
  7. 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. 
  8. 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. 
  9. 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.


A version of this article by Lee Raine appeared in the January 2004 issue of Equestrian Retailer Magazine.