"Dos and Donts" on business websites
What to do and what to avoid on business pages! Some basic thoughts - page 1 (page 2 here)
- Look at your site with the eye of a visitor! (If you surf to other sites, note what you don't like and what you like, and make your site accordingly!) If you follow this advice, the rest of the tips is just a small reminder on some things you already noticed!
- Do not use too much colors!
- Most people still have only 256 colors when they browse the Net - and the browser will adapt (dither) the colors that you choose. So, if you want your page looking the same to all your clients, use the netscape 256 color chart! Not only for the backgrounds and fonts, but also for your graphics!
- Do not overuse colors that "bite the eye"! There are some colors that you should use with wisdom, they're not for the common text or background! Look at a color chart - and all the brilliant, eye catching colors should be used only in small portions. Then, they will produce special attention! (e.g.bright red, yellow, light green etc.)
- Avoid color combinations that make reading hard. (dark on dark, light on light, bright on bight colors etc.) Creativity should never lead you to forget the target - and the target is that your information reaches the visitor!
- Check out some of the real heavy traffic sites - as Yahoo, Altavista, Netscape, Microsoft, IBM etc. Look what they do, and learn. You may have your individual style, but style is never more important than your main target! (=your information should reach your visitor!)
- Do never construct your page for high resolutions!
- Most people will not have a big screen with high resolution, the standard is still somewhere around 640 x 480! If people will have to scroll sidewards, they will go to your concurrent where they don't have to scroll sidewards!
- Most graphics that look good on high res screens will look much different when displayed in low res and with less colors! (BTW, high res graphics are heavy in file size and make slow loading pages!)
- Avoid frames!
- Frames will not be displayed properly by many people's browsers! (Even Netscape's site is frame free for great parts now, but they developed them!)
- If you cannot work without frames, make minimum your main pages without - otherwise some people will leave your site before having seen anything you offer!
- Again, look at the real heavy traffic sites and learn! (BTW, frames will not function properly with bookmarking!)
- Avoid heavy graphic files!
- They slow down your page loading time!
- They will not be of any significant worth for your visitors! If you sell images or graphic services, make the samples on separate pages and show people on your main pages how fancy graphics you are able to make in small filesizes! That's real workmanship! (BTW, Netmechanic.com and Websitegarage.com will help you reduce graphic file sizes!)
- Beware also of bannerexchanges where heavy banners will be displayed, the good ones maximize banner sizes! If you're not sure, place them at the bottom of your pages! (I know that this sounds strange for some ears, but I would rather stop a bannerexchange than having it on top of my pages where it is shown as empty space for seconds!)
- Again, follow the sample of the heavy traffic sites!
- The first impression
- The first impression is what makes a visitor ready for more - or not! The first screen of your index page is the most important of your whole site! Make it fast loading, and see that the visitor already has some information on the first screen that makes him scroll down for more, that makes him think that he can profit from reading on! this is also important for the first screen of your pages!
- Place only links you really want the client to follow in this first screen! (E.g. links that will bring you benefits if he buys something there!) We are working on our site to follow this rule, that means we will link the banners of other companies that are on top of our index pages to a separate page in our site, where we will ask the visitor to bookmark and come back, and again give him an oversight what we offer! You don't want to enter a visitor to your store and then choose the door to another shop and never come back. (do you?) The only exception to that is this site - Affiliate Central, as here our main goal is that people check out the Programs and sign up!
- Make the first screen (remember, 480) look inviting, clear (not chaotic), informative etc.
- More on page 2
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