Make Your Website Credible - Let Your Little Website Shine, Part 2 by Lynne Schlumpf
In Part 1, I discussed the speed of your website load, in today'sarticle we will discuss how to make your website credible with agreat looking design.
Please remember that this subject has so many opinions among so manypeople that it really is up to you in the end of what you think looksgreat, and what may look stupid or overdone to someone else. If yourgetting criticism in your feedback from your visitors, keep it in mindif it is constructive.
Today we will just discuss a few things that can help you decide foryourself the best route to take in your own Website design.
The first and best thing to do is to find out what the big guys aredoing. You know the sites that get huge hits. Study these sites.What about them is pleasing to your eyes? Is it a certain way thenavigation links are presented? Is it the location of certainelements on the page? What elements make up these websites that makethem easy to look at? Do they have really cool graphics? Do theypresent the content in an easy-to-look-at way? Notice that theydon't usually overcrowd the page. A lot of junk crammed into onepage turns people off.
Are their lettering and graphics clean-looking, and without raggedyedges (aliasing)? Keep their formats in mind when you design yours.What colors do they stick to? How do they present their menus/links?Time them, How fast do they load? What elements on each webpagecatches your eye first. Look at these websites with a different eyethan just somebody visiting there. These websites were designed byprofessionals doing this for a living. What types of presentationdo they know brings people back. Look at it from an artistic andmarketing eye. What about these sites provides a lot of marketingmaterial? Don't copy them, of course, but keep in mind where theirnavigation links go, where the logo usually goes, how much contentis on the main page, how the navigation links they have are prettystandard.
You'll notice that almost every really good page has some of thefollowing links in common:
- Contact Us
- About Us
- Help
- Feedback to Webmaster
- General Feedback
- Links to other sites related
- Home (on all pages except home, of course)
- Back Buttons, Next Buttons, Paging for pages that go together
- Search this site for....
These are just a few of the common links that you'll see on reallysuccessful pages. Step back and look at your page from a marketingand artistic viewpoint. Would you stay long?
If you need help with the "Looks Great" part of your website and youinsist on doing the design yourself, here are some pretty good sitesto give you help:
Make sure that the links in your Website actually work. I'vementioned this in another article, but this is worth mentioningagain. Test and test and test your site for broken links. Put itthrough some very exhaustive checks to make sure all the links thatpeople click actually go somewhere and make sure the places theygo when they click are where they were supposed to end up in thefirst place. Have friends or coworkers test the links for you to geta second, fresh eye to look. It helps to put an email link at thebottom of each page that says something like: Problems with oursite? Email the Webmaster. This will correct more mistakes thanyou'll ever correct on your own. People love to gripe about how yourwebsite doesn't work as advertised. It's good criticism for you.When responding to them, respond politely and thank them forpointing out this problem.
When I return in Part 3, I’ll talk about how to make quick responsesto requests by your prospective customers. Thanks for joining me!
