Web Design. First Impressions May Be Your Last
The perfect web page is not only nice to look at, but is easy
to use. Most web visitors stay only seconds before they leave
your site. That is one sad fact you must come to terms with.
There is no second chance for a first impression, as they say.
You must grab their attention and hold it.
Here are some of the most often overused designs you will come
across and ones you may do well to avoid.
Background music
Music has become so overused and misused that it is downright
annoying. If a visitor hears music without requesting to hear
it, they may leave. If they again hear the same music on each
page they visit, you can bet it will not be long before they
will be gone forever. If you have a music site and have samples
for visitors to listen to, that is another story, but at least
give them the option to turn it off or on at will. Do not force
them to listen. Personally, I leave my speakers off because I am
sick of the whole thing. I especially hate it when a person
on-screen starts talking to me when I did not hit the play
button. In addition, music takes longer to load and the visitor
may leave before the music ever comes up because they are tired
of waiting.
Popup windows
Pop up windows used to be cute; used to be. Now I find them
another of the oh- so- annoying attempts to get you to sign up
or buy something. I realize we are all in this business to make
money and we all must use the devices available to us, but use
some common sense and don't beat people over the head with all
of theses techniques at once, a little goes a long way.
Here are some essential practices to follow:
Give your visitor an easy way to find what they are looking for
by including a navigation menu, a site map and perhaps even a
search bar if you have a lot of information on your site. Pay
attention to the font size so that your pages are easily read.
Too large of a type makes for a strange looking page and too
small makes people squint or worse yet, leave altogether. Do not
use strange color combinations unless your site is all about art
or very esoteric. Black background with white type for example
you will see but I can hardly stand to look at it! Take care not
to over-use images and be careful of their file size. Large file
sizes make pages load slowly and you are then faced with the
same situation, people leaving before the page loads. Most image
editing programs have the capability to reduce file size. Be
sure every link in your site is working. It also goes without
saying that you must test every link on your site before you
place the site on the web. Broken links are a sure sign of
sloppy work. Make more paragraph breaks than you normally would
in a written paper. This makes it easier to scroll and read and
keeps your visitor on the page. Check your site in different
browsers as they do not all behave the same. . The most important is Internet Explorer, but many people prefer Mozilla
Firefox as well as others.
Hire A Designer?
You can see that there is a lot to think of when it comes to
web design. There are many ways to get a simple web site up
quickly. Many hosts have web templates that you upload images to
and type directly into the page. This is fine for an informal
site and for the initial learning phase, but soon becomes old
and looks the same as everyone else. You can buy software
designed for this purpose which is what most people eventually
do, or you can hire a designer if you have the funds and lack
the desire or the time to learn yourself.
If you are a business owner, for example and are using the
website to sell products you will have many things to do rather
than spending countless hours learning the process of web
design. There is a time to hire a designer and this makes sense
not to waste all your time doing everything in your business.
After all, you cannot be the bookkeeper, the human resource
manager, the warehouse manger and the web designer! You need to
concentrate on the big picture. If on the other hand you are a
work at home business, you may find it helpful and perhaps
necessary to do everything yourself.
No matter which way you choose to go, remember the design of
your website is the most important first impression you may ever
make and perhaps the last. |