Is Your Website "Killing" Your Online Business?

The design of your website is crucial to the success of your online business.

People have gotten wise to Internet amateurism and a poor looking website will turn many visitors off buying. Similarly, a site that lacks focus and tries to be too many things to too many people will not have visitors scrambling to hand over their credit-card details.

In short, if your website is to succeed, it must inspire visitor confidence, be clear about its purpose and give off a general air of success.

Fortunately, you don't need specialist training in web design to create an effective and professional website. Just keep it SIMPLE and keep it FOCUSED and you'll make life easier for both yourself and your visitors.

Website examples

Here are 27 things you can do that will give your website a credibility boost:

1. Aim to capture your visitors' interest as soon as they arrive on your page. It's important that you let them know IMMEDIATELY what they'll find on your site and what they gain by being there. Try to come up with an opening headline that will capture the attention of those people you're trying to reach.

2. Be consistent in your design. Each page should have the same fonts (text style), the same navigation links, the same general layout, the same color scheme, etc.

3. Choose your colors carefully. Don't put inappropriate colors together. I read an article recently that suggests that designers should look at the colors they're putting together on their web page and ask themselves if they would put wallpaper with that color scheme in their living-room.

4. Use a plain color background (i.e. no fancy textures or designs). Make sure your text contrasts STRONGLY with your background color -- black text on a white background is the best combination.

5. Optimize your pages to download quickly. Avoid using excessively large images (both in terms of memory size and actual on-screen size). Images which are too large will slow the download time of your page, often look bad and are usually unnecessary.

6. Don't make your pages any longer than they need to be. Pages that scroll down forever can be tiresome and, unless they're well written, keeping your visitor's interest is difficult. Be sure that you NEED everything on the page. It's worth critically examining the contents of a page, sentence by sentence, and ask yourself which stuff is really necessary and which stuff can be done without.

7. Don't be afraid of empty space. Don't clutter up your page with loads of 'stuff'. If it's not essential leave it out. You can draw attention to the important things by giving them space to breath rather than making them big or loud.

8. Be sure to put a link to your home page on every page of your site. Links marked 'Back' are no good to people who've arrived directly onto one of your pages from a search engine.

9. Include your contact information (company name, address, link to contact page and perhaps even tel./fax. numbers) at the bottom of each page of your site. This will save visitors having to search for it, and it will reassure them that you're a real and credible business.

10. Don't put a graphic counter on your page. People will not buy from a site that has something like "Visitors since 1998: 00001471" in a glaring graphic at the bottom of the page. Just don't do it. You'll have all the statistics you need about your visitors from your webhost (or third-party stats services like sitemeter.com).

11. Don't clutter your home page with banners, ads, and unnecessary graphics. Less is definitely more in website design. If you want to place ads on you site keep it to a minimum - especially on your home page (maximum 2 banners - preferably none). These only take up valuable download time and distract your visitors from your central product(s).

12. Make sure your site works well with the main browsers and screen resolutions. Verify that you've no broken or outdated links.

Website examples

13. Check and double-check your spelling and your grammar. Mistakes on this front will kill a sale quicker than you can say "How do you spell disastor?".

14. Don't even consider putting background music on your site. Nothing sends visitors running away faster than a woeful, repetitive midi file tinkling away in the background.

15. Avoid overusing gadgets - again if you don't need it and your visitors have nothing to gain from it, leave it out. There are very few gadgets that impress nowadays. If you want to impress your visitors give them clear information on clearly laid-out pages that download quickly.

16. Your navigation bar should contain links to the MAIN pages of your site only. Links to additional sub-pages can be made from those main pages. Try to ensure that nothing on your site is farther than three clicks away from your home page.

17. If you're using graphics for your main navigation links, you should consider including text links also (at the bottom of the page, for example). This will be appreciated by visitors who can't (or don't want to) download graphics. Also, Search Engine Robots can only follow text links, so if you only have graphic links they will not be able to get to the other pages of your site.

18. Don't put 'under construction' signs on a page. If it's not finished don't make it accessible.

19. Keep Your Links Honest. Don't put a link that says "Click here for a free gift" that actually sends your visitor to another site that is offering nothing for free.

20. Use CAPITAL LETTERS sparingly to highlight important words. DON'T TYPE LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT ALL IN CAPITALS. IT MAKES YOUR TEXT HARD TO READ AND LOOKS AWFUL. YOUR VISITORS WILL NOT WANT TO READ IT. IF YOU WANT TO HIGHLIGHT SOMETHING IMPORTANT, TRY USING SPACE OR COLOR INSTEAD.

21. Don't put large blocks of text in BOLD. You should use bold text sparingly, for emphasis or for headings.

22. Don't UNDERLINE any text on your page. People will think it's a link (that isn't working).

23. If you have links incorporated in your text, make sure they're visible. The best way to get your links noticed is to use the standard blue-underlined link look.

24. Avoid the use of frames (i.e. when the screen is broken into two or more parts). These add a whole heap of complications that you can do without.

25. Avoid using one of those 'Click here to enter' entry pages. They're a waste of your visitor's time.

26. Get others (who have some experience with surfing the Internet) to check out your site. Did they find it easy to understand? Did they find it appealing to the eye? Did they get lost or find themselves stumbling into a dead end? Would they feel confident buying from a site like yours? Leave a message at webmaster forums asking fellow website designers to give a look at your site and make comments.

27. Concentrate on keeping things as simple as possible -- both for you AND for your visitors.