In-Your-Face Website Design Advice
by Marsha Maung
Jan 6th, 2009
At most, you will have six to eight seconds to keep your website visitor from clicking away and it all depends on one thing and one thing only….your website design. Whilst it’s great that you have a great color combo going on there, there are many other elements that work together to either hold or push away your website visitors. It doesn’t even matter if you’re downright upfront about selling something – sometimes that’s a good thing – because the most important thing is to use a website design that presents to your website visitors the very thing that they might be looking for.
Website designing is the same with going for an interview. Before heading for an interview, you’d dress yourself up to the nines and ensure that every wrinkle is ironed out and no baby spit is present on any part of your clothing and no sticker in your hair when you dash out the door. You have seconds to make a good impression on your interviewer and your website design has seconds to work its magic.
A simple and non-flashy website design works best
I don’t know how to put facts down nicely so I’ll just be very….downright mean about it. FORGET. ABOUT. ALL. THOSE. FLASHY. STUFF. I mean it. Flashy website design annoys me and some people to no end. Unless you’re really someone….perhaps like Donald Trump or Michael Jordan…no one’s really going to hang around for the website flash intro to load! That’s the fact. Face it.
I would also allot limited space for flash banners and advertisements. You can probably place one at the top of the website design page but other than that, it cheeses people off. The only time that you can do implement this website design element into your web pages is when the sole purpose of the website is to either cheese people off or sell banner advertisement space. If that is the case, then the website design does not really matter anymore and you can ignore my advice.
Make your website design easy to navigate
Then there’s this other thing about website design that turns people off. When designing your website, take pains to ensure the navigation of the website is easy….REALLY easy…like blindingly easy….like completely dummy-proof. Like if-you-can’t-find-the-navigation-you-belong-to-dog-school easy.
I mean, if you’re interested in reading more about a product or service and you can’t find the navigation…good heavens, imagine the frustration! Conventionally, the navigation to a website design should be on the left of the web page. However, there are many people who place the navigation bar horizontal across the top part of the web page. Whatever rocks your boat, I say. Just make it easy to find.
Not too many fancy footwork, please
They’ve said that a picture paints a thousand words – true, true and I am not going to fight a losing battle. The point is when you have too many high resolution images going on in a single web page, you’re going to lose your customer’s attraction to you. As a basic rule of thumb is that the web page should load within ten to thirty seconds. Anything more than that, you’ll have to think about removing a few of the hard-loading pictures and placing it elsewhere.
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
Black against white or jarring colors are out
I have this favorite blog of mine that I visit quite often….but not so often. I love the content that the blog owner puts up in the blog but the only thing preventing me from visiting more often is the fact that he opted for black background, white, bright yellow and orange wordings! Every time I finish reading the blog, I would have a serious case of white dots in front of me as a result of squinting in the screen to read.
Please, if you value your website visitors and want more coming into your website, kindly keep this website design advice in mind.
Good luck with designing your own website and hope you will have some fun with it along the way. Try not to punch the keyboard or smash the mouse too much.*** *** ***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsha Maung is a Malaysian-based freelance writer with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her blog for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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Listen up! I am a very nice person, if you think this article is neat and you'd like to publish it in your website, all's cool with me but with one condition. Only one and from the bottom of my heart, I wish that you would, in all sincerity, allow me my one single wish....to place the following codes into the your website at the END OF THE ARTICLE. It's not going to disrupt much, so please do it?
Either paste the above ABOUT THE AUTHOR stuff into your website (with links included) or copy the following codes into your website. That's it! Thank you! *muax*
<b>Marsha Maung</b> is a Malaysian-based <a href="http://www.marshamaung.com" target="_blank">freelance writer</a> with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her <a href="http://www.marshamaung.blogspot.com" target="_blank">blog</a> for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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