Remember you only have one chance to make a good first impression!
Page and File Size
How long will you wait for a page to load when you visit a site before
you decide to leave? Remember some surfers may have a slower connection that you do. Keep your Home Index
Page is under 40K and all other pages under 60K, if at all possible. This is probably the hardest aspect of web
design and the most important. Use our web site tools to reduce your image file sizes. Look at Yahoo!, the most
popular web site on the Internet. Their site is very simple and loads fast. Also, do not require more than four
clicks on the scroll bar to get to the bottom of the page.
Content
Make sure your main page tells viewers what your site is all about and
has something to get their attention so that they do not leave. Better yet, something that will bring them back
again. The more often you update your site, the more visitors you will get. Change your site at least once a week.
Content should to be unique and interesting that you can't find anywhere else. Do not have sound "auto play"
whenever someone visits your website. None of the Top 100 websites on the Internet use it.
Menu, Consistency and Contact Information
Your site's navigation menu should stay consistent throughout your website
in the same location on each page. Keep your site consistent throughout. Do not have a different background
color on every page, or a different navigation scheme. Show your contact information on every page of your website.
This would include your email address, home index page link and any other revelant information. (Try to reply to
all e-mail within 48 hours).
Text
The only underlined text on your pages should be links to other web sites.
Do not underline any text to show emphasis. On the Internet all underlined text is a link, so do not confuse
your visitors. Make sure all the text on your site is easy to read. Avoid using busy background images that distract
the surfer away from the text.
Spelling
Run spell check on all of your web pages. Misspelled words can make your
site appear amateurish. Contractions should usually be avoided.
Site Links and Images
Double check to determine that every link on your site is properly linking
to the correct page, or external site. Check your links after you have uploaded (FTP) your pages to the Web.
There are very few things as annoying as "Error 404 file not found." A lot of broken links and images
will cause most surfers to leave your site. Make sure all the images on your site work. One common mistake is that
the path to the images looks like this: <img src="c:\website\pics\logo.gif" alt=" my site name">.
For people visiting your site the images will not load, but for you they will because they are on your c drive.
If you use Java on your site, offer your visitors an alternative view link option. Java can be slow and buggy and
sometimes Java will make browsers crash.
Alt Tags
Use an alt tag. (alt="image description here") on every image.
This will allow your visitors to read the description if their browser is in text only mode (usually those with
older computers) and they will be able to read the descriptions before your images finish loading. This can
be important if you have an image with a link (to another site). Your visitors can click on your image before
it is loaded and save time if they are looking for that particular link from your site. You may want to have certain
links open a new page so that the surfer can easily get back to your site by having the current page remain open.
Do not over do this on every link.
Promote Your Site
Make sure you properly promote your site. Visit sites that are similar
to yours and check out how they have made their pages, learn from their mistakes, and offer to exchange links with them. When you search for
keywords that describe your site, check out the sites that rank at the top in the search engines. Look at their
sites and source code to see how they have achieved that ranking. Note that some sites block their source code
from surfers by special software (it is not inexpensive, contact us for more information if interested).
Sales
If you are selling something on your site, make it know up front on your
main page. Give a good picture of the product and tell surfers why they need it. Advise surfers that their credit
card is secure with a secure server. If your web host does not offer a secure server, then go to our list of information
on web hosting and find a new web host. This is usually offered as a feature on most sites.
Backgrounds
Anything besides the use of a white or black background should be done
with caution. White backgrounds are used for sites with a lot of text content and black backgrounds are usually
used to achieve a special effect.
Browser Capability
The very last item on your design checklist should include testing your
site with different browsers. Your visitors will be using many different browser versions and screen resolutions
and so should you. Do not forget to view your pages with both Microsoft Internet Explorer
and Netscape
Navigator using the following common resolutions: 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768.
You may think that it is unnecessary to have both browsers on your
desktop, but this is the only way to make sure your pages look acceptable to the majority of viewers. Additionally,
making your entire site work for only the newest browsers will cut your visitors
by 50% or more.
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