Avoid These Common Mistakes When Designing A Website
While there are many tips on how to create an award-winning website, there are even more on how not to create a website. While everyone has their own opinions on how things should and should not be done, these 5 things are the most common mistakes in website design.
1. Bad Content
One of the first things that people notice about your site is its content. Whatever it may be that they are looking for your site should give your customer the information that they need. Some basic rules to remember is to keep the information short and to the point, answer questions, and use everyday language. Also don’t forget to proof-read your work and never place text that is misspelled or contains bad grammar on the web.
2. Advertisements
While it is important to have advertisements on your site so that you can make money, it is equally important not to go over board. If you site contains a pop-up advertisement, you are losing a lot of traffic to your site. In fact, most people will navigate away from your site when a pop up is present. At the same time, floating advertisements are one of the most annoying things on the web today and are a great way to lose customers.
3. Legibility
Using unreadable font is another great way to lose traffic to your site. Make sure that when you pick a font that you pick one that is not too small or too big. Also make sure to use high-contrast colors between the background and the font.
4. Sound
While you may think that adding sound is a creative way to set your website apart from others, sounds can be very annoying. I am sure, that many of you have jumped out of your seat when an unexpected sound comes from you computer. I certainly know I have more than once. Unless you absolutely must include sound in your website try to avoid scaring the heck out of your visitors.
5. Browser Compatibility
A few years ago you may have been able to get away with only having your website accessible by Internet Explorer, however the times have changed and now more and more people are using browsers such as Safari and Firefox. Make sure that you don’t lose any traffic to you site because you don’t support a certain browser.
This list could go on forever about the things not to do on a website. However, these 5 things are some of the most important aspects to look at for when designing a webpage. Remember these tips and others and your site should be error free.
About the Author: Drew Johnson is a Public Relations intern for Kinetica Media, an Internet marketing company that works to harness the power of websites, email and search marketing to enable businesses of all sizes to get and keep more customers.. Visit www.kineticamedia.com or call 866-526-4309 to see how their proven online marketing services can increase your customer loyalty and sales.
