Top 10 Website Tips
1 ) Choose colours carefully – As nice as your company colours may well work in a logo or on a business card be aware that if you want someone to read and understand your content then they will soon give up if the colours are brash, harsh or hard to see. Particular no-no’s are dark text on a black background, light text on a light background and bright coloured text on bright coloured backgrounds!
2 ) Don’t annoy your visitors! – It may sound obvious but unless your goal is to get visitors to leave as soon as possible then don’t do things to annoy them. Top of that list are pop-up’s, mandatory sign-up forms, advert overloads and auto-play music.
3 ) Visitors don’t like waiting – Whilst that animation and gorgeous high resolution images and range of adverts and mini game and high definition video may look great, visitors won’t wait the 5 minutes for the page to load so no-one will ever get to see it. Keep the loading times fast to keep visitors coming back.
4 ) Keep things consistent – Keep all the pages and sections of your website consistent in layout and design. Always keep menus in the same place throughout. Doing this will keep your site easy to navigate and not confuse any visitors.
5 ) Check your website on multiple browsers – Before you unleash your website on the world, make sure you check it in a variety of internet browsers. A site may look amazing in Internet Explorer but all over the place in Firefox.
6 ) Avoid lengthy sections of text – Web pages shouldn’t be too long, substitute text for images or video that will allow greater user interaction. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, in this case a picture is worth not having a webpage as long as your arm.
7 ) Check your links – There are few things more annoying than being provided with a link to another page or website to find that it doesn’t exist or is broken in some way. A visitor to your website should never ever see the phrase ’404 Error, Page Not Found’.
8 ) Provide clear contact information – As great as your website may be, some people would still rather speak to you rather than read through your site. In which case make sure that your contact information is both easy to find and up to date.
9 ) Check your spelling – When receiving an informal email we can all overlook a spelling mistake or two, but it really is unforgivable to have spelling mistakes on a website. Check, double check and then get someone else to check again!
10 ) Remember your goals – What is the purpose of your website? Is it to sell products, get customers to download a brochure or capture information. Whatever it might be the goal should be the very centre of your website design and you should allow your visitors to complete that goal as easily and quickly as possible.
Great post, covering everything. I found a complete Guide here. I will keep them in mind while designing a layout in future.
Thanks for taking the time to share.