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Optimal Website DesignElizabeth McGee The idea behind good website design is to offer your viewer a logical flow while making it interesting and easy to navigate. Lead your viewers to the starting point and then direct them through your site without confusing them. Here are some excellent tips that can help you develop a user friendly site and please your visitors senses. Give yourself a chance before they get away. 1. Use lots of white space. Dont feel that because you have a whole screen that you need to fill it up with stuff. Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that list the subject of your page and below that expand on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section. Dont cram a lot of pictures and ads. If you have an ad keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader. 2. Dont use animation and flashing objects. As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is important but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitor and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Dont force it on them. 3. Every page of your site should contain an about link. The internet can be a rather cold and quiet environment. If someone can come to your site and find out about who you are and what you are about, they can feel a little better about doing business with you or taking advice from you. Always include your business address and phone number and email address as well. This lets viewers know that you are serious about your business and that you welcome contact. 4. Include a Privacy Link Viewers like the reassurance that you have a policy that follows privacy guidelines. They want to know that you will not sell or give away their information. In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners wont do business with you unless you have it. 5. Always keep your links in blue. Why does that matter you might say Its an expectation that viewers have along with the links being underlined. Theres certainly no law that says they need to be as such but people spend a lot of time on the internet and its good practice to keep your navigation consistent and recognizable. If its not you may lose out on clicks. 6. Keep navigation consistent Keep your sites navigation consistent. What you do on your index page should be done the same way on the rest of your sites pages. Keep the colors consistent as well. Dont force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars and links the same for each page. 7. Understandable buttons and links. Title your links appropriately. Dont use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to sports equipment dont label the link Great Outdoors, call it sports equipment. If you have a link to cameras dont label the link hotshots, label it cameras. Your viewers dont want to waste time figuring out what things are. Be clear with your labeling. 8. Focus on the YOU, not the ME. Make it obviously clear to your readers that you are there for them. What can you do for your reader What benefits are there for your viewer How can you make their life or business better or more profitable Request feedback on their success. Find out what they want to know or how you can offer them what they need. 9. Make sure your page loads fast. If viewers have to wait for a page to load they will click elsewhere. Heres a site that will help you determine how well your page loads. If a page doesnt load in 8 seconds you lose 1/3 of your visitors. Heres a great free tool to help you check your websites load time: http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm 10. Use a site map. A site map will give visitors a "guide" on viewing your site and also eliminate confusion, especially with larger sites. Its a road map for your visitors to follow while they are on your site. Sitemaps will also increase rankings and placement within the Search Engines.
| | | | RELATED ARTICLES Up the Sandbox! Go to any internet marketing forum you want these days and one of the topics is sure to be whether or not there is a "sandbox" at Google where new sites are forced to come and play for 3-6 months before joining the ranks of ranked and searched results. On the surface it would appear that this is so. New sites are typically taking a long time to get indexed and even longer to show up in the search results. So hence, the sandbox theory. Lets examine some possible reasons and more importantly, our reaction to it. 5 Tips For A Better Website Having an eye catching website is great, but are you optimizing your website to allow the best performance possible I receive several emails a day from clients asking how they can get more hits to their websites, what can be done to increase sales, and how to prepare their sites for search engines. There are very simple things that can be done to help your website perform its best. How Does Your Website Measure Up Does your website make a good first impression Is the navigation intuitive Is the content appropriate for your audience Youve had your website up and running for a while now but youve always had a nagging suspicion that your website is lacking effectiveness and you just cant put your finger on it. Youve dabbled with colors, added/removed images re-written the text but it still feels as if everything just isnt working together. Wouldnt it be nice if you had a way to sort things out Well now you do! Affiliate Alternative; Google Adsense The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs Getting Your Site Seen By Search Engines Is your website listed on search enginesWhen people search for you, does your site show up on page 1 or page 20 of the search engine results What is PageRank What is Pagerank - Pagerank is based on how many links to one website. PageRank is a value that represents how important a page is on the web. Robots or Spiders figures that when one page links to another page, it is casting a vote for the other page. Also the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote is. It matters because it is one of the most important factors that determines a pages ranking in the search results but It isnt the only factor that Search enginesuses to rank pages. Not all links are counted by Search engines..Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Search engines. Image Formats-GIF, JPEG, BMP When browsing the internet you are likely to come across many different image formats. However, the most common formats are: CompuServe GIF, JPEG, and Bitmaps. The Five Rules Of Influential Web Writing Building a professional reputation requires a campaign founded on your words: the positions you endorse, the motions you advocate, the accuracy of your vision. Writing for the Web can either establish your expert credibility or destroy it. Absolute & Relative Links How Do They Rank The question for this article is whether or not you should use "absolute urls" or "relative urls" Not only that, this article researches whether or not Google ranks these methods differently. Search Engine Optimization and Web Site Usability Build a Web site and the people will come. Most Common Search Engine Optimization Mistakes Understanding exactly what search engines do and what search engine optimization is seems to elude many new website owners when first starting out. The fact is that when you’re not familiar enough with the industry to determine SEO fact from SEO fiction can only mean trouble for your website. Could you be making those same mistakes with your site How Web Design Can Affect Search Engine Rankings Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when promoting your site on the search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site, to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration when building or updating your web site. Top Five Most Profitable Color Combinations Used In Cover Design! "Two days ago, an old man stopped me on the street and asked me who my stylist is. MySQL Database Handling in PHP Most interactive websites nowadays require data to be presented dynamically and interactively based on input from the user. For example, a customer may need to log into a retail website to check his purchasing history. In this instance, the website would have stored two types of data in order for the customer to perform the check – the customer’s personal login details; and the customer’s purchased items. This data can be stored in two types of storage – flat files or databases. Writing Benefit-Driven Web Copy – 4 Steps to More Sales Youve identified the benefits you offer your customers, but how do you turn a list of benefits into engaging web copy which converts visitors into customers Opinion – Search Engine Success This article is actually the summary to a book soon to be released by the author, titled “Guaranteed Website Success”. Opinions are quite often controversial. Such is the nature of this one. Mobile Accessibility - Your website in the year 2005 Throughout 2004 the number of web enabled portable devices boomed. By “portable devices" I mean PDAs and smart phones. What does this mean for you Well it depends whether or not you care about your visitors’ experience - you build your website for visitors so you really should! Linking out is good Many websites I come across dont have a single link to another website. Ask the webmaster why not, and the answer you get is simple enough: "If I link to other websites people might leave my site." At this point I break the news that site visitors will leave your site. And theres nothing you can do about this. Web Templates: Replacing Designers I’ve seen articles and websites that suggest you can buy a website template and skip the expense of hiring a professional website designer. Recently, I read several testimonials from the very satisfied customers of a website template vendor that mentioned how quickly they were able to get their sites done. The template vendor commented that he/she had known people to complete their websites in around two hours. Website Development: Become Your Own Expert Starting and maintaining a business is challenging enough without the additional financial burden of hiring a web site expert to put your vision on paper.If you are starting your business on a “shoe string budget,” hiring someone to take your written materials to type in a basic format, add a few pictures and edit what you tell them periodically may not be sound money management. |
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