Design Tips

Business on the internet requires a successful web site. A professional looking website is an important aspect of that success.

Pages need to load in 8 seconds or less. If pages take too long to load, surveys show, most people will not wait.

About 80 percent of all web site traffic comes from the eight major search engines. Be sure your pages are optimized correctly with proper META tags on each page, and submitted regularly to at least the major search engines monthly.

Be cautious about "busy" backgrounds that make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. Background theme should be the same on each page of your website. Your website should be neatly organized throughout. Colors can affect a visitor's mood. Bright colors often make people more cheerful or happy, blue and purple have a calming effect. Darker colors such as brown and black may have a depressing effect on your visitors. When deciding what colors to use on your website, choose colors based upon the type of effect or mood you want to create in your visitors.

You should use a minimum amount of animated graphics. Animated graphics can be distracting, and cause your website to loose its professional appearance. Animated graphics also can cause your pages to load more slowly, which is something you definitely want to stay away from.

The main page of your website should be very specific about what your website is about, what you are selling or offering on the website. Chances are if a potential visitor cannot figure out what your service or products are they will leave and not return.

Banner exchanges should not be placed at the top of your pages. The limit for banners on your site's pages should be two, even one is best.

It is a good idea to include your contact information on each page of your website. Be courteous and speedy at replying to comments and suggestions, at least within 48 hours. Promoting good business relationships is an important aspect to your success online.

Use proper grammar and correct spelling. Check your site often for errors in grammar and spelling. Check your links often to be sure they are working properly. Several errors on a website page will make your site appear unprofessional.

Certainly it is important to design your site to be easily navigated. Place navigation links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the web pages. If you have a lot of links, it is best to use text links that help your pages load quicker. Buttons will be fine for just a few links as they do take more time to load on each page.

Your company logo should be placed on each page and always have good navigational links on every page of your website.

If you use sound on your website, do not set it on "auto-play." This can be annoying to your visitors. In addition, all web browsers are not the same. Try to view your site through different browsers and screen resolutions to see how your visitors will see your site.

Continually adding new content to your site will give visitors a reason to keep coming back. Visitors will learn that you always have something fresh and new.

Create e-books about your site and use them to market your site. Offer them for FREE to your site visitors and include your products or services for sale sprinkled throughout the e-books, always with your website link and contact information as well.

One of the top-selling products online is "information." Provide your visitors with quality, informative articles. You can write your own articles or go to any of the many article directories and copy/paste articles to your site. Before using other author's articles be sure to view the author's bio box and copyrights to know how the article can be republished. Most articles you find in the article directories can be republished free as long as you include their bio box.

A simple, professional looking web site is the best start for success online.

Written by: Connie Limon. Visit: http://smalldogs2.com/SuccessArticles and http://www.camelotarticles.com This article is FREE to publish with the resource box.

// posted by gng @ 6:06 PM 0 comments