CRE Loaded Design

Does your website send people fleeing as soon as they get to your home page or does it hook them in and keep them captivated? Do you offend your visitors with the following annoyances?

1. Unnavigable sites.

Do not expect visitors to jump through “link hoops” to get to your information. They won’t. Make your product, price, or service, clear, precise, and easy to find. Design your content so that even elementary school children can understand your site.

2. Excessive pop-ups. In this day and age, pop-ups are inevitable.

But if visitors have to close multiple pop-ups to get to your site, they may leave and never come back. The same applies for “fly-in” or “hover” that bounce across the screen. If you have to use anything, incorporate a pop-up that loads when a visitor leaves your site.

3. Automatic audio.

Always give people the option of listening to any audio or not listening at all.

4. Spinning, flashing, or blinking ads.

Flashing banner ads are the equivalent of a carnival barker trying to lure people into a sideshow. You don’t need to shout to people to have your message heard. Keep you ads limited and your content abundant.

5. A page full of dead links and 404 error messages.

Keep your links up to date and take down the links that are no longer active

6. Dark text on a dark background.

Don’t expect your readers to work to read your content, because they won’t. They will leave and find the information they need elsewhere.

7. Use Flash judiciously.

Unless you have a film site or a product that requires a detailed visual description, resist using Adobe’s Flash for e-commerce. If you are using your site to sell a product, use high-quality, fast-loading photos and creative descriptions of each item. If you must use Flash, make your files as small and fast-loading as possible.

8. Solid blocks of text with no breaks between paragraphs.

That may work in print, but it will not fly on the Web. People don’t read online content the way they read offline — they skim. Imposing blocks of dark text will put off your readers. Make your content clear and concise. Break up your paragraphs, and use plenty of white space.

9. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links.

A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location. Knowing your past and present locations makes it easier to decide where to go next. Links are a key factor in this navigation process and knowing which pages you’ve already visited frees you from revisiting the same pages over again.

10. PDF Files for Online Reading.

People hate coming across a PDF file while browsing because it interrupts their flow. Even simple things like saving documents or printing are difficult because standard browser commands don’t work. If you have a PDF file, get rid of it.

If your site makes any of the mistakes mentioned above, make the necessary changes as soon as you can. In fact, if you haven’t redesigned your site in the last 6 to 12 months, you may be due for a redesign anyway. It will bring you more traffic, keep your visitors happy and increase your sales.

Sofia Sapojnikova
Vesta Digital
http://www.vestadigital.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/web-design-articles/10-website-design-mistakes-1650030.html