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You’ve been there before: a website that tries too hard to be all things to all visitors. In their zeal to try and please everyone, they satisfy no one! Website design is a delicate balance, and one that requires a good amount of clear thinking and focus before you begin. Let’s look at some of the things to DO and some NOT to do when designing your website.
• Don’t spend a lot of space talking about how great you or your company/product/ideas are. This space is about what you can do for your visitors.
• Make sure if you’re using a purchased or free template, that you’ve removed all the Latin (Loren Ipsum) and graphics that aren’t yours. This is especially true for file names.
• Do not, repeat; DO NOT, load up your page with ads. Do so and it becomes abundantly clear that you have nothing of value to say, but only your advertisers.
• Crowd your pages with great content, not cool banners. A few, relevant ads are acceptable, but err on the side of value, and your visitors will be far more likely to click on the ads you are running when they’ve already received something from you, in the form of good solid content.
• Don’t see how many colors you can use on the page. Try and have some sense of an overall color scheme.
• Do have a sensible navigation scheme. Also be sure to use in context links for navigation purposes. (Google likes this!)
• Make sure all of your links are the same color, that they turn color when clicked, and that your pages aren’t filled with links. Also make sure that all of your links work, and that they aren’t overly long. Use anchor text where appropriate.
• Try and avoid terms, especially on your home page and navigation bars like “Home”, “start” or “Welcome to Our Website!” You can do better than this.
• If you’re using a Wordpress blog, do not use the Kubrick theme!
• Make sure your navigation is consistent from page to page. You should at last be able to get to all pages of your site from each page.
• Make sure you’ve included a privacy policy, contact us page, and any disclaimers you need to.
• Make sure your logo is at the top of every page and is clickable, leading back your home page.
• Be sure not to use to o much or too little text. There needs to be some “white space” on the page, and also remember that web page visitors are “scanners”, and you can’t reasonably expect them to pore through 1400 words to get to your point at the bottom. Food for thought…
• Don’t overuse popups. Annoying, distracting popups that appear before your visitor has made any move to exit your page are doing you a disservice. There is a time and place for popups!
• Don’t force your visitors to jump through hoops to get what they want from your site. Especially don’t ask for an opt-in to gain access to ordinary parts of your site. An opt-in request should be reserved for when you’re trying to get already interested visitors further down the sales funnel.
There are dozens more we could mention, and I’m sure you’ve got a few of your own. Just remember that when you’re designing your own site: if you don’t care for it, or it rubs you the wrong way, you’re not alone!
