Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having On Your Site

By Jo Han Mok

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 had 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.

If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. Here are some points to consider:

Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a redesign. Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that function if you do a redesign.

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. If this is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign.

Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognise your new design at first glance.

You risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page. Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your old layout. Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site.

To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them!

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 designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that 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!

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 everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again.

If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site - users 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 everytime 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 a webmaster 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!

Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com

Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses at: http://www.internetmillionaireblueprints.com

Website Content: Using the King to Explode Your Internet Business

By Daryl Campbell

It seems like every day a new website innovation or internet marketing strategy arises. For instance, we are witnessing the dawning of an online video revolution. Many internet marketers have taken advantage of this and set up very profitable websites.

Then there is the social networking phenomenon which has made communicating with your audience much more interactive. These innovations will continue as the internet keeps evolving.

But content is still king and will remain so for a long time. Getting caught up in the latest gadgetry is a mistake business people make online and off. Video is terrific but when the smoke clears, people still want to read information that is well written and highly valuable.

The majority of your site traffic is going to come from search engines. When your site gets crawled by the search engine spiders and they see that you provide quality information (on a regular basis), your website will be rewarded with better search engine rankings. Of course there are other factors in determining your website ranking but good content heads the list.

As for those potential customers you are trying to attract, the quality of your content is make or break time. You have heard the old saying that you never get a second chance to make the first impression. That cliche takes on more meaning when applied to internet marketing online.

It is one thing to go to a store in a mall, not be satisfied and then decide to go somewhere else. On the internet this can be done with the click of a button where thousands if not millions of competitors are waiting to make a better impression than you did.

Pay special attention to not only the information you are providing but also how it looks. Good content can be easily overshadowed by using font styles and colors which are almost impossible to read. No one is going to strain their eyes when they can just as easily find a more user friendly website. Showcase your content by placing it in a setting which provides maximum readability to your customers.

Also keep in mind the first reason most of us go online is to get information, not to purchase a product or service. You cannot have a website that is filled with pages and pages of advertisements.

Even if you are promoting a specific product, your goal is to give the customer as much information on the overall topic the product falls under and then gently point them to your offer. This can be a balancing act to say the least.

You naturally want to make a sale but you don't want to come off sounding like a used car commercial at 3:00 AM. If you are unsure about this you can always outsource to an experienced copywriter. However you will eventually have to do some writing on your own, so it's best to get started now.

Content is king of the internet. It will play a critical role in everything from attracting new customers to boosting your website traffic. Just keep it simple and stay focused on providing useful information that your target audience and the search engines will like.

Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com

Article written by Daryl Campbell. Content is king but original content is emperor. If you have not done so already start writing and find out why marketing with articles will explode your website traffic