Website design blunders that you can easily avoid.

  Avoid the most common design no-no's that can drive even the most forgiving surfers away.
  In many cases, all it takes is a decision not to use a particular design element or 'feature' on your website!

  The following list of design blunders are the sort of things that any commercial website owner should consider carefully... if your site is designed and intended for a relatively small number of people - friends and family - then most of what follows won't really apply.

  Avoid anything that follows your mouse around.
  It may seem like a string of dots or hearts or something that follows your mouse around is cool or cute. it's really not - it's a distraction and after about 30 seconds those little bouncing balls get quite annoying.
  We all know what happens when a visitor gets distracted or annoyed, right?

  Avoid unclear or inconsistent website navigation.
  Don't make your visitors "figure out" your website navigation system before they can use it. Every minute they spend puzzling out what your cryptic labels mean just brings them that much closer to leaving.
  Make your navigation system a "No-Brainer" that anyone can figure out without thinking. Use plain text links whenever possible and use the universally-accepted words for common pages.
  Remember that your visitors are coming from all over the planet, and from all types of cultures. Avoid slang terms and vague, ambiguous page titles.
  See the Website Navigation Design section for more help.

  Avoid slow loading pages... especially your home page.
  This is, quite possibly, the number one reason why people leave a website. The internet has created an entire 'sub-culture' of people who are incredibly impatient.
  The majority of internet connections in north America are V92(56k). Make your home page load in under 20 seconds, under 15 is even better, for that connection speed.
  Make your interior pages load in under 30 seconds if at all possible. If the page is graphic heavy, make sure that the link leading to it is labeled "gallery" or "portfolio" or something similar that will indicate that the page may take extra time to load.
  You can also break a large page into several smaller pages.
  To test your pages, try the Site Timer tool at WebScale.com. It will show you the average loading times for your webpage on different connections.
  See the Web Page Loading Time section for more information.

  Avoid doing anything that overrides the visitors browser settings.
  Deliberately over-writing the homepage settings, disabling the 'back' button, breaking out of frames, maximizing the window on open...etc. Anything that changes the way your visitors browser works is generally a bad idea.

  Avoid sloppy, amateurish website design.
  This is a kind of general statement that covers a lot of different aspects of design. What it boils down to is basically this - if you are trying to represent yourself as a competent, professional person or company then you need a professional-looking website.
  This is a short list of design blunders that can get a website instantly dismissed as an amateur website:
  * Inconsistent page "Look & Feel".
  * Using frames just because you can.
  * Too many colors, too many font styles.
  * Poor or difficult navigation menus.
  * Spelling errors, poor syntax, paragraphs too large.
  * Everything centered on the page.
  * Low contrast between text and background.
  * Different background image on every page. (May be ok for music or art websites)
  * No margins - text flows from edge to edge no matter how big the window is.
  See the Website Design Basics section for more.

  Avoid designing for only major browsers.
  Last time I looked, Internet Explorer had the most users, followed by Mozilla Firefox, then Netscape 6 and Opera. If you design your website for Internet Explorer and ignore the others, you are taking the risk of loosing 30% or more of your customers before they ever see your website.

  Avoid 'hiding' from your visitors.
  If you want to increase sales be 'out there' where they can see you. Have an "About Us" page and a "Contact Us" page, with links from every other page so visitors can find them.

  Avoid making it too difficult or confusing to make a purchase.
  The odds are great that if someone is ready to buy from you that they have made other online purchases in the past. They expect to find 'standard' features like a shopping cart and a 'Checkout' or 'Buy Now' button. They also expect you to accept their credit or debit card, so don't try to make them mail you a money order.
  If you cannot afford to get a full-blown merchant account with all the bells and whistles, then PayPal is a perfectly viable alternative.

  Avoid omitting the alt="description" text in image tags.
  Two reasons to always use a description in your image tags - 1) The primary search engines are reading and indexing the descriptions, and 2) you need to allow visitors who are blind or who have graphics turned off to find important links.

 Avoid designing for only one monitor resolution.
  As of October 2007, the most commonly used monitor display was 1024x768 pixels. That gives you an 'above-the-fold' viewing area of about 950x750 pixels, depending on the browser in use.
  Don't design your website to require the visitor to side-scroll to see important information. Always check your design in different settings, with different browsers.
  That 'above-the-fold' area is your prime real estate. Don't waste it on features or graphics unless they directly contribute to the visitors experience.

The resolution breakdown for this website: October 2007:
53.31% ~ 1024x768
15.42% ~ 800x600
9.6% ~ 1280x1024
8.09% ~ 1280x800
3.24% ~ 1440x900
3.06% ~ 1152x864
1.38% ~ 1280x768

  Avoid using music, java applets, other gizmos and doo-dads just because you can.
  If you use music be aware that it slows loading time drastically... and always Always ALWAYS give the visitor the option to turn the music off.
  Other 'gizmos' like scrolling text, java applets that show rippling water, any streaming video type of application... hey - it's really cool, but if it does not have a direct bearing on the website theme or if it does not enhance the visitors experience then don't use it.

  Avoid requiring your visitor to get a plug-in to view your website.
  believe it or not, not everyone has the latest & greatest shockwave or flash plugin - and many people don't want it.
  If you must do that, then at least give visitors an alternative page where they can go see a little bit of what you offer, and let them decide if they want to download and install a plugin to see the rest.

  Avoid building a website completely in Flash.
  There's no doubt that flash can let you do some awesome things with web pages... but it is designed for fast connections and most people simply don't have the patience to wait for a page to load.
  If your website is about flash, then by all means use a lot of it... most of your visitors will probably have the plugin to see it and will be willing to wait for it.

  Avoid using 'Splash Screens'.
  You've probably seen them... you go to a website and wait three minutes for it to load, just to see a nice picture of angels or something and a button that says 'Click here to enter'.
  Listen - the only reason to use a splash screen is to direct people to a version in their own language, or to give them the choice between a low-bandwidth or a high-bandwidth version, something like that.... and it should load fast.

  Avoid using a WYSIWYG editor.
  Even the best of those things are ok, not great, just ok. They allow you to build a webpage pretty easily & quickly - but at a price.
  That price is sloppy, bloated code that different browsers read differently. If you don't clean up the code then your pages will load slower and do some strange things in different browsers.
  HTML is not hard to learn, even CSS and PHP are really just variations... and you will write MUCH better code than a WYSIWYG editor ever can. (This program can help you learn HTML fast)
  Just as an exercise, I took my Glossary page and re-wrote it with a WYSIWYG editor... the results might interest you... WYSIWYG Output Demonstration page