Experienced web site designers will be able to give you good advice about how to please your web site visitors rather than leaving them screaming and running to the hills. When you set out to design your website your plan was not to annoy and frustrate people, because this will cause your visitors to leave quickly and your chance to promote your company or organization will be gone.
- 1. Make sure every page has something valuable on it
Before you settle down to your website design, prepare a skeleton like the site map where you list title by title the value of each page, you should always be looking to make the visitor feel that each page contained something useful and interesting for them to read. Presentation of the compelling content can come afterwards the first most important thing is to decide what the message is going to be, and then you can decide how to present it.
- 2. Content and publicity
Ok if you have decided that your website will justify itself and cover its costs from publicity this is fine. However you should keep the golden rule in mind at all times that you will need a minimum of 75% editorial material and no more than 25% as advertising. Visitors will no more watch a TV channel to see constant adverts than stay on your site to be bombarded with publicity.
- 3. Control your site
Do you really need to launch a music feed or worse someone talking at the visitor when they arrive at your home page? Consider visitors working in an office being embarrassed as the music launches unexpectedly surprising their co-workers. Keep your special effects to a minimum, these will more often than not distract and disorientate the visitor. Don’t rely on your visitors having super high speed internet connections, in many countries an analog modem is as good as it gets. Allow users to download larger content in a PDF or JPEG format.
- 4. Don’t scroll
Scrolling text carries a problem in that the visitor is required to keep up with whatever speed you insist on, however cool it may appear to you, don’t guaranty that your web site visitor will agree. The basic rule is unless you are designing a “tribute to yourself ” website you should always keep in mind what will appeal to your visitor rather than to yourself.
- 5. Block the pop up
Popups according to research are one of the most annoying aspects for web site visitors when questioned. Popup riddled sites appear like the site has an infection and cause visitors to shy away. While as a web site designer you may think popups are neat you will only be really driving your visitors away.
