Website Design Tips
When you come across the headquarters of an off-line company, what you see gives you an impression of the company, good or bad. Your website is just the same. This makes it very important to practice good design principals. Your website need to reach the maximum number of people so that you can make the most sales possible.
Navigation.
It is very important that you give clear direction on how to navigate your site. It should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to get around your site. If a visitor is confused about how to get around your site they will leave it and go somewhere else.
Simplicity is the key word. let’s say your site had 1000 or more articles. Your visitor is looking for a particular article, you need to make it simple to find. You can do this by using an SQL driven database, or just an index. This means that your visitor is now able to locate a particular article easily. By providing this index or database driven search you have created a hassle free way for your visitor to find what he was looking for.
Your goal in navigation should be to keep it so simple that even a young child would be able to navigate your site. Multi tiered drop-down menus and complicated flash-based navigation should be avoided. If your visitor can’t work out how to navigate your site they will leave.
If your site has many pages and your visitors become deeply engrossed in surfing your site, you will need to make sure that they know where they are and how to get back to the main page. It is important not to create confusion with visitors. Confusion means abandon ship!
Here are a few more ideas that you will find helpful.
#1 Do not use splash pages.
A splash page is the first page you see when you arrive at a website These are often very beautiful with graphics. They often have the words welcome or, click here to enter. In fact, they are just pretty pages with no real purpose. Don’t give your visitors a reason to click the back button. You then give them the real value of your site up front without the splash pages.
#2 Do not use excessive banner advertisements.
Even the newest people using the Internet have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements. This means you would be wasting valuable Web real-estate in using banners. It is far better to provide valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content. This will lead your visitors to feel they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
#3 Avoid Audio
Have you ever visited a site and you are trying to concentrate on the content, but find the audio overwhelming. What did you do? There are a few options. One is turn down the sound on your computer or hopefully, there is a volume control on the site. If you have plenty of content on your site you will be better off not using audio. If you are determined to have audio on your site, make sure there is a volume control or muting available.
