Top Five Things to Avoid in Web Design

Many people think that designing a Web page is easy, but all too often, we see Web sites that are not helping the businesses behind it gain more sales or attract more visitors.  Here are simple and easy pointers on how to improve your Web design.

1. Design for your target, not for yourself.  Most Webmasters put up sites that appeal to them. They neglect to consider that their Web sites should be about what their target visitor’s want, which is to get information, buy premium quality products online, get entertained, or get involved with a community.  Your Web sites should provide these.  If you sell vacuum cleaners, instead of going on and on about your company's history or your salesman of the year award, talk about your vacuum cleaners’ specs and how they clean better than other brands. 

Remember that visitors often do not take the time to read your entire site before they click on that back button and proceed to other sites.  If you do not fulfill their need when they first scan your Web pages, they will leave.

2. Be clear about your main objectives.  As a rule, you have four seconds to let people know just what your site is all about.  Thus, Web sites need to be self-explanatory.  Going back to the vacuum cleaners example, your Web site should have the words "vacuum cleaners" on the prime space of your Web site.  Bannering "We sell vacuum cleaners" and having pictures of vacuum cleaners will let your visitors know just what your site is all about within the first few seconds of landing on your page.

3. Make your site user-friendly as well as easy to navigate. Some sites tend to bury their content in layers of useless information and require their visitors to click on a lot of tabs.  For example, you may have a good landing page that gives people the general idea that you sell vacuum cleaners, but to view the products in the catalogue, you make them sign up for it using a form that has 100 questions.  Then they would have to confirm their e-mail address and then click on a link to that confirmation page, and ... you get the point.

Make your site's interface as user-friendly as possible.  Strive to be a one-click shop.  Don’t tax your users' patience. Your users should be able to easily find their way around your site, too. 

4. Don’t scrimp on content.  Just because you need to be direct-to-the-point on your landing page, it doesn’t mean you stop yourself from giving your visitors the information and the details they may need. Once you have captured their interest in your site and in your products, the next thing they will be looking for is sufficient information and some more literature. That’s what the other pages of the site are for.

Update your content, too. If you think your site would attract visitors and have them return on a regular basis by having the same content for the last five years, you are wrong.  Updated tips, how-to's and other instructional and informative content that are relevant to your products is a good way to attract new visitors and getting old ones to return. 

5. Avoid having too much material on your Web page.  Just because it is easy for users to scroll down does not give you the license to cram as much information as you can into one page.  Keeping your Web pages simple, short and concise will help you get the message across more effectively.  Plan your pages in such a way that it would come out as intuitive as it can.  Cutting all your information into sections that will be hosted in separate pages will be a good idea.  It also helps to play with different layouts, and choose one that would allow you to have as much content in one page as possible without overcrowding it.

Also, do not be afraid to leave some areas of your page blank.  White space does not have to be bad: it reduces overload and allows you to divide your information effectively so that people would not have problems reading your page.