Web Design     

Specialists in website design give advice

3) No original web page content

"Write your own web page content, it makes all the difference"

It would be very easy for me to go and copy someone else's website design & content, it would save me hours of time, and in many cases other people can write and spell far better than I will ever be able to. So why do I write my own web page content? Several reasons, first there is the moral side of things, getting a free ride of someone else's hard work has never really appealed to me. Secondly search engines like google and Yahoo will filter out duplicate content and it will not be found anywhere on the internet other than if someone types your domain name in directly.

I cannot stress how important it is to get fresh, interesting content on to your business web site. Why on earth would anyone come to your site unless you had something of interest?
It is also important to know that this is your job as the business owner to either delegate or write the content yourself, a web designer will not do this for you unless of course you pay them to do it.

This is a problem because you are then paying web designer rates. The other problem is that the web design company is unlikely to have a specialist in either your area of expertise, nor are they likely to want or even be able to write a good quality article on something outside of their expertise.

The best way to write articles is either employ someone on a contract basis who knows your industry and is a reasonably good writer to write your articles, or do them yourself, either of these two solutions can give you a good result.

Its a business web site, not a painting!!

We have all seen the people who drive around in car that seeks attention, the person driving has all their windows down with the music on louder than what is normally socially acceptable. They are attention seekers, they are the only ones who think what they are doing is impressive, there is a category of web sites that can be put in this category. Where only the person who designed it thinks it looks good.

It is common for someone who is fairly new to web design to have a look at some existing websites and see all the fabulous technology that can be used. Flash movies, animated pictures, all singing, all dancing high tech stuff that if used without restraint can really cause distress amongst your potential clients and make your attempt at web design look like a 3 ringed circus.

They also detract from the message and or information your professionally designed web site is trying to convey.
Put bluntly these things annoy the hell out of visitors. Simple, sharp and professional is what you need to be aiming for. If you have hired a web designer make sure you keep them in check with the creative stuff. There are certain unwritten rules that you should stick to such as contact details clearly visible, simple easy to use navigation, and a site map.
Too many flashy things will confuse your visitors and they will just hit the back button.

You will lose a great deal of visitors through poor web site navigation. When we are looking for something on a web site our attention span decreases and if something is too hard to work out, visitors will just hit the back button. Put yourself in your visitors position, how long do you stay on a web site that makes no sense, maybe 5 or 10 seconds, about as long as it takes to hit the back button.

The important thing to remember with navigation is to keep it consistent.
You will notice on this website that the main navigation on the left always stays the same, it never changes and all of the buttons point to the same place no matter what page you are on.
This allows the visitor to become comfortable and familiar a lot quicker than if the main navigation was to change on every single page.

In summary the object is to make sure its very difficult for the visitor to get lost on your page. If they do get lost then you should make sure you have a site map available on every single page so that the visitor can easily recover and continue enjoying your web site.