Website Design Mistakes

     “If you build it they will come!”  Really???  What should you do?  As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you have the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design. It's not IF we make mistakes within our design, it's NOT making the same ones over and over again and learning from what we did wrong.

     When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

     Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web design errors I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare these against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!  Make the changes even if you are “in love” with the work you have done.

1) Background music

     Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again, and again!  If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitor’s burden when viewing your site -- users still on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

     As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

     Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

     In concluding this article, let me remind you that as the “webmaster” of your site, your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"Why do we not have the time to do things right,

but we can find the time to correct our mistakes 

by doing things over?"

Wonderfully Made

     Sometimes the tears fall for no apparent reason.  You may just be sitting alone in your favorite chair and not consciously thinking of anything particular, but then the tears begin to roll down your face.  You may not consider yourself an emotional person, especially if you are a man, but it can happen to any of us.

     There are times when you will recall a moment in your life, perhaps from many years ago, and the emotions begin to swell up within your eyes and you can’t hold them back.  It may be an embarrassing moment if this happens when you are in front of your friends or some very important event.  But remember we are all human.  There are things that have affected us in many different ways.  We cannot judge another in terms that may only fit our circumstances.

     Think for a moment about all the things that have happened to you.  There is no other person on the face of this earth that has had those very same experiences.  Not even your siblings have endured all the same things that you have gone through.

     Now as you ponder some of those moments you will find that many will bring a smile to your face.  You will recall times and people who you have thought about for years.  But those memories are yours to treasure forever.  You will also recall times when things were very tough and you felt that they were next to impossible to endure, even that they would continue for all times without end.

     However, you survived those times and here you are at the present situation of your life.  It is still possible to look back at these times and feel the hurt, the anxiety, and the fear that those times brought upon your life.  You can also relive the joyous moments in your life as well.  You can do this over and over.

     What a wonderful ability we have when you are able to do this. Although we are imperfect because we are only human, we are so wonderfully made!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"There is no one else like you,

so be the best YOU you can be!"

Improve Your Sales

     Today without a website your business is putting itself at a great disadvantage.  And anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

     Make your website YOU!  The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your sales letter, not to your whole audience.

     The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings have the follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too. It’s only human nature.

     Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your products offer. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website. However, don’t overdo this point.

     Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid on their part to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

     Lastly, don’t be embarrassed, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give clear instructions on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").

     You’ll find these simple adjustments to your site will bring you more sales for fewer visitors!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"The greatest salesman who ever lived

had to begin with that 1st Sale!"

Website Navigation

     One of the primary implications of a well-organized, good website is to keep your visitors on the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and have its contents viewed by those who would be interested in that topic. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or something somewhat similar. However, most individuals prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in the other people’s shoes:  You need to understand how a visitor to the website might think, what they might want to do and how they are going to react to the information on your site.  How can you keep your visitors engaged on your site?  Navigation!

     As I have previously said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think.  Consider the following:

     Situation A:  A website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page), well planned  in terms of placement, and design.

     Situation B: A website with poor navigation (takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page), hard-to-read navigation fonts, and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

     In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the products sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.  The visit to this site would be an enjoyable one and the visitor would look forward to visiting again in the future.  Perhaps they would even take the time to share your site information with their friends.

     As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example: home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ).  Your visitor would probably have left your site LONG before they got through all those clicks!

     What do we learn from this simple analogy?  In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?  Take the time in your site preparation to make sure your navigation is understandable and easy to use.  You will find that your site will be much more productive!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"Regardless of where you are going,

make sure your path is straight."

Your Sitemap!

  

   A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap only for the sake of having one.  By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

     What is a sitemap?  A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to more intelligently crawl your site.  So why is having a sitemap so important to your well-built site?

1) Navigation purposes

     A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and get lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.  Simply:  It makes it easier for your site visitors to have a more enjoyable visit to your site!

2) Conveying your site's theme

     When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors' time.  Simply:  It gives your visitors a “snapshot” of what your site is about!

3) Site optimization purposes

     When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.  Simply:  You want your ENTIRE site to get noticed by search engines.  Why not give them a head start in making this happen?

4) Organization and relevance

     A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.  Simply:  It makes updating your site with new information a lot easier!

     From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organized for everyone.  You will have more people visiting your site because you will get better recognition from search engines and people will be able to find you quicker!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"You don't know where you're going 

if you don't know where you've been.

And you never can get started on the journey 

if you don't know where you are!"

Dreams

    Have you ever had a dream so real that you were sure it was reality?  When you awoke did you question yourself as to what had happened being real or were you now dreaming that you had been dreaming and had been awoken!

     Maybe those times that we are going through various situations we tell ourselves:  “I must be dreaming!”  Maybe it’s true.  Regardless, if the circumstances are such that we are extremely pleased with what is happening or it’s something very terrible.  In either case we may try to convenience ourselves that we must be dreaming.

     What IF, and that’s a big if, our entire lives are only a dream?  What if at some point we found ourselves waking up from what we thought was our life.  Perhaps a life that we have lived for many years.  Now we find out that everything had been a dream.  What would we do?  What would even be the thoughts that might go through our heads?

     Could it be possible that we are living TWO lives right now, but living them at different times?  Maybe we have the life that we feel is the real life when we have our eyes open and are going about various activities that we feel our day with so that we think that this must be LIFE!  Our maybe our REAL life is the one we enter when you shut our eyes and let our minds drift even if it is for but a few moments.  Maybe the things we picture in our mind as fantasy or within the realm of impossibility is actually our REAL life!

     What if both of these ideas were true!  And what if we could control our venturing back and forth between these TWO lives?  Which would you prefer to stay in the most?  Let’s be honest we usually only create ourselves a fantasy world when we are displeased in some fashion with the life we are currently living in.  What this created world consists of depends mainly on our own mental concepts of what we feel would be a better life than the one we are presently in.

     So if you come upon your family member or best friend who seems to be “dozing off”.  Don’t bother them at that moment.  It may only be that they are taking a few moments to transfer themselves from their current life into that world of fantasy that they have created for themselves.  They will no doubt return when they feel the urge to do so.

     However, if you are the one who is transporting into your own fantasy world make sure you do it at a time that will be safe for your present body.  Don’t do this while driving or performing surgery or some other extremely delicate work.  Do yourself a favor and wait until you have completed all your assignments in this life and then lay yourself down to sleep while entering the other.  You’ll find it a much safer journey.

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"The difficult takes time to accomplish.

The impossible take a little longer."

Friendly Pages

     You’ve heard it said that the “new store” at the Mall has all the latest gadgets that you would like to purchase.  However, when you go there, you see armed guards at the entrance.  You’re facing a barbed wire gate to try to get through before you can enter!  And the entrance itself is only a two foot square space that you must squeeze through in order to get to any of the merchandise within the store. Wouldn’t you think twice (or maybe more times) before you attempted to enter that business location?  People may have the same view of trying to get into your website --- or even locating your site!   

    There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors. This way you make your site more appealing to those who want to enter.  And it is much easier for them also.

     Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, read the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

     If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

     Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically. You’ll be trying to lead a blind man through the important data that you have on your site.

     Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.  You are helping the robots better understand the importance of your site by allowing them the chance to “read” your site in “their” language.

     Stop using the wrong HTML tags like <font> to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

     You want your site to “user” friendly not only by the people who will be making a visit to it, but also to the search engines who will logging your data so that the “real” people will be able to find you.  Always make yourself “friendly” to the web and it will reward you greatly.

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"You may be opposed,

you may be in conflict,

but you can still be friendly!"

Yesterday

     Why is it that we always seem to think that “yesterday” was so much better than it is today?  Our minds seem to be wired to recall fond memories of the past and to “block out” those memories that produce pain or “bad” feelings.  This appears to be some type of safety mechanism that helps us to cope with things that have happened in our lives.

     I recall on one occasion how my father would complain about the cost of living today.  “Why can’t we go back when gasoline was ten to fifteen cents a gallon?  When you could buy a complete meal at a restaurant for a couple of bucks?”  He would usually say these things when he was having to pay for something that I wanted to have.

     Yet it’s not only a thing that your parents or grandparents might say.  I recall growing up as a young boy and receiving TWO dollars a week for an allowance.  With this money I would go to the Saturday matinee, purchase a large popcorn, a drink, a candy bar, and pay the admissions to the theatre and still have money left over from my funds.  Where have those days gone?

     However, we don’t bring to mind the fact that you had to work an eight hour day and made about $10 to $12 per day wages if you had an average job.  And you were probably really WORKING for those eight hour days!  We never want to put things into perspective.  Yes prices were lower, but wages were low also!

     Sadly, EVERYTHING seems to only go up and up and up!  That is everything except our moral standards!  When I was growing up and attending school you would have NEVER given a thought to the fact that a student may be sitting next to you with some type of weapon preparing to execute your fellow students.  Life has truly become “cheap” in the eyes of many today.    Your only concern in “Yesterday” was if “Mary Jane” was going to be in class so you might have a chance to talk to her.

     You RARELY heard talk about a teenage girl having a baby.  Now the school system makes concessions for those to bring their babies to class with them while they get their education.  And it was almost shameful for a kid to “drop out of school”!  They would only be ruining their future lives.  Now it is advertised that being in school is not that important.  You can “drop out” and become an internet success overnight!

     I guess when I look back the words of my father ring in my ears and they have been found true:  “The only thing good about the ‘good old days’ is that they are gone!”  Maybe we should spend less time looking back at yesterday and begin paying more attention to tomorrow!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"The greatest strength comes from a study of 

the past and using it to create a better tomorrow."

Image Optimization

    You have probably heard it said many times, but what does it mean?  The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words means a picture may be more easily used to convey an idea more quickly and effectively than the written word alone.  Writers of texts that describe concepts involving imagery or abstract thoughts need many words to get their points across. And you can readily imagine when you are shown a picture how more quickly the “light bulb” comes on in your mind.  This is because a photograph, artwork, drawing or graphic can often demonstrate an idea with one look, much more quickly than a narrative can explain things.  How many times have you tried to assembly an item by the instructions, but instead turned to the picture illustrations to figure out how it should be done?

     Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.  Let’s face the truth:  it simply takes a LOT longer to load graphics onto your web site than it does the text.  And if people have to wait TOO long (seconds) they will leave your site.

     Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not too many to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

     You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance. This will probably sound more difficult to you than it really is.

     If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the "quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.  Just go on the web and do a Google search for these image compressors.

     On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of your image, so make your choice wisely!

     All this may sound like a lot of extra work on your part.  However, optimizing your site images may not only reduce your load time, but provide your next potential customer with a better experience.

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"A picture captures but a moment in time,

but that 'frozen' moment can relate a lifetime."