What makes you scream when you stumble upon a website? For me, it is tasteless music with no way to turn it off.
Signs of Webmaster Newbies
All of us have been “newbies” at one point in our webmastering lives.We spent hours at dhtml, javscript and graphics sites looking for copy-and-paste stuff that we thought would make our sites look impressive.
First timer’s sites are easily recognized with their smorgasboard of animated gifs, javascripts and other features. Unfortunately, this makes a site look amateur.
Creating an Amateur Image
You might have a brick and mortar business that’s been around for the last decade, with tons of satisfied customers.On the net, however, your visitors do not know who you are.A professional online image will create trust. When designing your website, here are some things to avoid so that your business does not look amateur or like a fly-by-night operation:
- Dark, heavy backgrounds with hard-to-read fonts – For a business website, it’s best to use a plain white background and black text so that your visitors can read it easily. Some first timers are tempted to have “fancy” backgrounds with different colored text. Not only is this hard to read, but if you have a product line, it is difficult to make pictures of your product line blend in with the background.
- Pages that are larger than the browser screen – There’s nothing more irritating that trying to read a web page that scrolls across the screen. Generally, web users use 1024 x 768 as their desktop resolution. Try to remain within those confines.
- Sound effects – Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music, but even if you discovered music that appeals to every single person alive, don’t make it automatically load on your site. With a music site, there are scripts that will allow the user to click “play” at his or her option. This goes with audio advertisements or other background sound effects — provide a way to pause the sound or shut it off.
- “Cool” effects – About 8 or 9 years ago, it was real “cool” to have a flash presentation on the index page. Everyone was doing this. This does not establish your online reputation. Flash introductions take forever to create and many of them are just downright stupid. These introductions take a long time to load and most people will not view them. Other components that beginners think are flashy include scrolling text, animated images and page fading effects. When I first started designing pages, I added these things, thinking it made me look like I was adept with web design. However, the harsh reality is that these effects are a wate of time and a turnoff. I’ve seen some sites, designed by supposed design specialists, where the links scroll by really fast and you have to “aim and shoot” just to be able to click a link. Don’t waste your time adding in these effects. People visiting your site are looking for products or information, and are not there to look at animations that will give them a headache.
- No clear navigation scheme – Many people enter a website by the interior pages, not at the home page. You should give your visitors a way to easily click through your site. Because of their popularity, your visitors will be most familiar with menus that are on the top or the left. Regardless of where you place your menu, make sure it’s consistent throughout your entire site. An amateur web design has no clearly defined and consistent navigation menu.
- No search feature – Particularly if you have a large product line that you are selling or if you have a content rich site, always include a search box to help your visitors. If you don’t know how to do this, try free services like FreeFind or Google search.This makes your site “user friendly” and demonstrates that you care about your visit’rs experience.
- “Secret” prices - If you’re selling products, include the price. Don’t force your potential customer to go through the shopping cart process just to find out the price — many are turned off by this and will not do it in the first place.
- Policies – An amateur site will not include privacy policies, terms of use and, when selling products or services, returns and shipping policies. Providing contact information is an important “trust factor,” particularly if you are selling products or services.
- Under construction pages – “Under construction” or “coming soon” pages are a surefire way to announce that you’re an amateur. If you haven’t finished a page yet, don’t bother linking to it. Add a link to your menu and sitemap once the page is completed and uploaded.
- No online shopping cart – If you are selling a product, provide a way for people to purchase your product online. If people are online to buy something, they want to be able to buy it immediately. Chances are, they do not want to fax in their credit card to you or mail a check or money Order. If you don’t have a merchant account, consider Paypal or, in the case of digital products, consider using a service such as Clickbank.For people who already have a merchant account, there are free and quality shopping carts available, like Mals-e.com, which also provides an affiliate program option.
What’s Your Gripe?
Newbie or pro, you can voice your opinion about what makes a stinking website at the NotGuru’s survey about poor website design. If you’re looking for software, giveaways and other things to help your fledgling online business, the NotGuru blog provides plenty of resources. Take the site design survey today and feel free to submit your comments – the results are quite interesting.
