Top 5 Web Design Pet Peeves
The evolution of web sites over the past ten years has been amazing. What started out as a motley gathering of crassly designed personal sites has evolved into a varied collection of multimedia presentations, dynamic online journals and stylishly designed online brochures.
What hasn’t changed, however, is bad web page design.
As a small business owner, it’s usually wise to hand over the design of your web site to an expert. After all, your time and energy is best spent attracting and providing service to your clients.
However, the more you know about web design, the more you can guide your web designer towards an end result that fits your needs.
This is YOUR web site, and is the online face of your business. Don’t let your web designer make these mistakes on your site – please.
My Top 5 Web Design Pet Peeves:
5. Page Overboard
Your web designer might enjoy showing off his or her mastery of the latest techniques, but that doesn’t mean they belong on your site.
Going overboard by adding animation or a “splash page” not only adds to the page loading time, but it can really irritate visitors who just want to see the information they came for.
Irritated visitors equal lost revenue and lost opportunities, so keep your web site clean, simple and easy to navigate.
4. Irrelevant Content
Content Is King when designing your website, and is equally important to both of the major groups who will determine the success of your web site.
The first group is your web site visitors. They’ve come in search of specific, current and relevant information, and they want it now. If they can’t find it, then poof, they’re gone!
The second group is the search engines. If the search engines find relevant information on your site, then they’ll pass along your site as a source of that information.
To keep your visitors and the search engines happy, a web site requires your ongoing attention. Outdated information sends a message to your visitor that you’re not taking care of business. They can easily assume that you also won’t take care of them as a customer.
Oh, and don’t even get me started on the kind of impression you will make with bad grammar and typos; enough said.
