7 DON’Ts of web design

A recent experience has got me thinking about good web design and how poorly it is understood even by many professional web designers. The problem stems from thinking of web design as being an aesthetic issue, and although that may be true for some websites, it is certainly not the main one; stats show that for many markets the most effective web design is one that is quite basic and almost under-designed. Based on that I’ve created 7 DON’Ts of web design for small businesses – let me know what you think.

1. Don’t think that the main criterion by which a website design is judged is how it looks

Good website design is about creating an effective website, one that encourages targeted visitors to take a specific action, whether that is get in contact, join your mailing list, or – best of all – place an order online. In order to achieve that both the objective of each page needs to be decided and the preferred action made clear; make sure your website knows more than just design.

2. Don’t start anything until you’ve done the SEO research

Please, please, please – don’t start planning your website until you’ve done at least some research. Unless you know what people are searching for you won’t know how your site should really be structured at what keywords to be used. The best tool for this is Market Samurai without a doubt.

3. Don’t include something clever just because you can

Too many websites look cluttered. Part of the problem is trying to do too many things on one page, which means the visitor just ends up confused with the result they hit the back button. You’ve got to ask yourself, if someone visits that particular page, what are they most likely to be looking for. Once you know that it’s simple – provide that information and nothing else. Remember this mantra – one page, one job.

4. Don’t forget structure

A good design also also about how the site is structured.  First, you need to make sue visitors can find the information or products they are looking for quickly and easily. Second, search engines need to be able to find all the valuable content on your site so that it list your in the results. And good internal linking tells the search engines which pages you consider most important and give more traction in those in the listings.

5. Don’t forget to have a clear call to action

You may think it’s obvious what you want visitors to do, but do they? So many website lack a clear call to action, focusing the visitor’s eye on what you want them to do next. Don’t think that they will spend time looking if it isn’t clear – they won’t and if they can’t find it quickly they’ll leave your site and go elsewhere. So make it large, make it red, make it stand out; and test, test, test until you can’t do any better.

6. Don’t over-design

Get the template right, decide how the information will be presented throughout the site (photo or video goes here, text goes here) but don’t try and design it pixel by pixel. That may work on the printed page, but it isn’t how HTML works and you’ll get different results in different browsers anyway. Pick a template, modify it and use the same template throughout unless you really have to.

7. Don’t use Flash

Flash sites mostly look awful, don’t work on many devices (including iPads) and don’t rank in Google. So just don’t.

If you’re interested in how I can help you develop your website please get in touch. Going back to first principals I can help you design a good looking website that will rank well in Google AND convert more visitors to customers.

Categorised in: internet marketing

This post was written by admin