How to Lose Your Website Visitors in 2 Seconds Flat

Does your website actually invite people to WALK AWAY?

Find out now.  Following on from 10 Deadly Sins – 1, Patricia invites you to check below and see if you are in line with any of these further deadly traffic killers …

• “What’s This All About?” People coming to your site are visitors, and should be treated with respect – especially if you want them to stay and look closer.
  1. Don’t land people on a page that leaves them guessing what your site is about – worse still,  wondering if they’ve come to the right place! Remember the itchy mouse finger…  I have seen trendy, professionally designed sites (some of them actually designers’ websites) that were so trendy and cryptic you really couldn’t figure them out.
  2. The part of your page above the top fold is crucial – use the images and text located there to identify immediately who you are and what the purpose of your site is.
• Navigation Not Simple and Consistent.  Make every effort to keep your site navigation simple and logical. You, the site owner, are the one with all the knowledge about your business and what your site has to offer. The success of your website depends on showing that to visitors logically, simply, and as quickly as possible.
  1. Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes. Work out beforehand the major areas of your site and think of your navigation as a hierarchy – because that’s exactly how it needs to be structured.
  2. Draw a diagram to help work it out.
  3. Visitors have their own needs in mind first and foremost – that’s why they come : to find information or products to help with a problem. Think in those terms and figure out their main areas of need.

  For example, with a Travel site you might have “Booking Travel”, ”Places to Visit”, “Travelers’ Reviews” as your main headings – to which you need to add the basic elements like “Home”, “About Us”, ”Contact Us”, “FAQ”, “Privacy Policy” and “TOS”. Then below your main headings you can start to flesh out more navigation details.  So under ”Booking Travel”, your first category links might be “By Air”, “By Rail”, “By Sea” etc. Under ”Places To Visit” you might add worldwide and/or local destinations, with countries as the first level and places within countries below.
  The whole thing should use straightforward, simple terms and follow a definite logic that leads your visitors straight to what they want. The more they have to search around trying to find it, the less likely they are to stay – or return.

  DHTML drop-down menus are an good way of organizing navigation, and they create a consistent, site-wide navigation system that can be very simply changed by altering one file. There is a neat little free script for one of these menus HERE.
  One last thing – don’t ever leave a visitor on a page without navigation options. Believe it or not, I’ve seen this from time to time. People can land on any of your pages literally out of the blue from a search.  Make sure you don’t lose this organic traffic.

• Clickability and the Guessing Game. Allied to site navigation is the whole issue of what is and is not meant to be clicked.  Leave your visitors guessing over this one at your peril – and unfortunately, here’s another trend that professional website designers are responsible for.
  It is apparently no longer “cool” to have your text links underlined.  OK – but if you are going to go that route, you’d better make sure your visitors have some way (other than running their mouse over everything) of knowing pretty quickly what they can and should click.  Why make it a guessing game? Yet right now, it’s also not “cool” to identify your links by using a color that stands out clearly from the rest of the text (you’ll note this blog sticks with tradition).  And if rollovers are used, the color change under present trends is minimal.
  What’s up?  It seems to me even less “cool” to thwart your own navigation and leave your visitors guessing.  They won’t guess for long, they’ll GO.
• Failing to Identify Your Own Priorities. If you as the website owner are not sure about what you want people to do on your site, don’t be surprised if they are not sure either. As a consequence they will leave in search of a more satisfying experience : feeling powerless or uncertain is not something any of us enjoy.
  1. Break your pages up into clearly-defined areas and make sure the layout of these areas leads the visitor’s eye to the most important things you want them to know or do. Your name, logo and tagline should be at the top.
  2. Use font styles and sizes, and images, to underscore the importance of the main things you want to say. Notice how on this blog, for example, the use of the font style Georgia in the headings, along with font size, helps readers to quickly find the areas they want to see.
  3. Similarly, if you need to explain the steps needed for a desired outcome on your site, lay it out clearly and prominently, using icons or images with the text to identify processes.
• Long-Winded Site Copy.   Copywriters seem to think that longer is better (does this relate to $$$ I wonder?) – as do many gurus. Internet users are expected to scroll mile-long sales pages with paragraph after paragraph of supposedly persuasive text.
  I personally think this is an insult to the visitor’s intelligence and a presumption on his time.  Do they really think we read all that stuff?  Do your visitors a favor, show them quickly and simply how your site or product can help them, and they’ll thank you for it by coming back for more.
• “Following The Herd”, especially when it comes to sales page layouts. It’s great to be able to grab packages of sales and splash page templates, but they DO become boring after a while.  I’ve gone to a number of sales pages recently all using the same shout-in-your-face red font heading, and I’ve muttered imprecations and clicked away immediately.
  If you are serious about your business, take the time to learn a little HTML so you can modify the template beyond just inserting your own ad copy.  Being different will help you stand out from the crowd and help pique your visitor’s interest to stay and explore further. I’ll add more about this later

I hope these 2 posts provide some food for thought. Website Design involves a lot of common-sense principles that are not hard to see once they are pointed out.  The key is to put yourself in the visitor’s shoes every time.

I’ll be posting more website design tips soon.
Patricia

Related Posts:

• 10 Deadly Sins of Website Design – 1
• Free Website Design Tools For Beginners
• Use Fonts Wisely To Make An Appealing Website

Does your website actually invite people to WALK AWAY?  Check below to see if you are in line with any of these deadly traffic killers …

Getting genuine traffic to your website isn’t as easy as some would have you believe, so if people come visiting, you sure don’t want to lose them within the first few seconds of your page loading.

Here are my first picks of deadly sins of web design that will pretty much guarantee this happening, so watch out for them if you are designing a site- or having one built.

1. Loud videos that start up automatically.  Believe it or not, people don’t want to be assailed by a video the moment they land on your page. The sin is compounded if the sound is loud or badly engineered, or the presenter’s voice is irritating – pro presenters too!  Squeaky or pushy voices are out.  If the visitor returns to the page a second time, it’s even more annoying. The result? Loss of repeat visitors.
   If you MUST have an autostart video, make sure it’s located above the top fold and has easily-reached controls. Don’t hide it down the bottom of the page so when it starts your visitor jumps out of their skin – it was one of those on a reputable site that finally got me writing this.  Most people, if they see a video and are interested, are perfectly capable of starting it up, especially if you invite them to in your page copy.
2. Audio that starts up automatically.  Even worse if you can’t shut it off  – unless it’s a brief message and very well recorded. Check out Todd Gross who is a real pro and does little ‘thank you for signing up’ messages very nicely.  You need easily reached controls above the top fold for anything longer than a few seconds.
3. Image backgrounds that interfere with the text and make it hard to read – an old, hoary clanger that still raises its head. This is a failing with many lovely people who build their own websites to put valuable information on the net. If you are putting up information in a niche you are passionate about and have an image you love – put it up as an image on the page : don’t use it as background. And this applies also to tiling small images or using a background with a strong repeat pattern.  The effect is horrendous, busy, distracting and annoying.
   Only those who know they can switch it off will stay – and why put them through that hoop? It’s just as easy for them to click away.
4. Color backgrounds that interfere with the text and make it hard to read – yes, it happens surprisingly often, especially with the current round of ready-made website and blog templates.
   1. You can get away with light colors behind a black font.
   2. You can get away with black or very dark colors behind a white font.
   3. If you want to avoid the stark contrast of white on black, try #cccccc  or lighter for your font color.  Don’t go darker than that, though – as the tonal contrast between font and background gets less, so does readability.   People will JUST LEAVE.

   Which leads me to -

5. “Gloom”.   Currently, there’s a trendy move towards gloom among professional web designers.  Don’t ask me why – dark grey fonts on a black background are a reader’s nightmare.
   I recently wrote to a well-known website after a makeover, asking why I should be expected, as a visitor and client, to highlight crucial navigation text in order to read it.  Even worse, the empty membership login box backgrounds were almost as black as the area around them.  Compound that with dark grey text and you are actually inviting people to get really frustrated and WALK AWAY.
   If you have hired a designer who wants to force this trend on your site, put your foot down with a firm hand.
   [Incidentally, those site designers fixed the problem – kudos to them.]

More coming soon. Click here for 10 Deadly Sins – 2. Patricia

Related Posts:

• 10 Deadly Sins of Website Design – 2
• Free Website Design Tools For Beginners
• Use Fonts Wisely To Make An Appealing Website

Those that don’t want to go that route end up looking for tools that the professionals use so that they can at least become  competent enough to cope with their own website design needs.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 or CS5

State of the Art is Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 or CS5 and everyone knows that it’s quite an  expensive product. Fortunately there are also some cheap website design software options so you can create your own websites using an aid that doesn’t cost you so much. The best thing about these programs is that they can all be tried for free before buying.

Microsoft Expression Web 4

Microsoft Expression Web 4 is Microsoft’s successor to the popular Microsoft FrontPage.  It costs roughly $300 which may seem like a lot, but it is $100 cheaper than Adobe Dreamweaver. It is said to rival Dreamweaver.  I must say Front Page was never my choice and never will be, though.  The above link takes you to a number of user reviews that are well worth reading.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2010SE

CoffeeCup HTML Editor This is a much cheaper option at $49 and is a quick download at just 30 MB in size. As a cheap website design software it may not have many templates and tools to make speedy professional designs, but it does fall under the category of WYSIWYG website editors and it does have a code editor for advanced designers who enjoy coding in HTML. Project management is supported as well, so it should be capable of handling big website projects.

Xara Web Designer 6

Xara Web Designer 6 is another $49 cheap website design software that, typically of Xara,  takes an innovative approach to designing website pages. This software lets you freely create mockups of your website and is smart enough to export your mockup and generate all the necessary HTML code to create a webpage that looks like the one you drew. The results aren’t always accurate, but Xara Web Designer remains one of the more flexible tools that allows speedy website creation. It also comes with plenty of professional templates that you can work on.

Older Dreamweaver Versions

Don’t forget  that  Dreamweaver started way back when its originator, the Macromedia company, had control of the product. In fact, Adobe has now released an older version of  Dreamweaver – you might still find that for sale at cheaper prices.  Remember, you don’t have to shoot for the top – there is a good chance that you won’t need the CS4 or CS5 features, as the earlier CS3 version and even the Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 version had plenty of tools that were powerful enough to create fantastic websites!

So take heart – you are not forced to buy expensive software. There are cheap website design software alternatives around, along with some free website design software packages also. I shall be adding more details shortly. A little later I’ll be talking about learning HTML, too.

Be sure to evaluate these programs first and see how they fit your website designing needs.

You can also visit Website Design Software -but do check back here because I’m going to add more helpful stuff.

Patricia

Related Posts:

• Professional Website Design 2.0 Styles
• Free Website Design Tools For Beginners
• Use Fonts Wisely To Make An Appealing Website

Web design 2.0 gives a professional and convenient platform for the development of websites. A stylish and smart website acts as a double edged sword, giving the benefit of the increased traffic as well as higher ranking. The advantages of web design 2.0 styles are:

1. Functions: Web design 2.0 is not only meant for enhancing the look of the website but has also expanded its approach in functionality. Web design 2.0 with its effortlessness provides the most vital benefit of improved communication process. It conveys the basic idea of a website through its elegant looks and simplified navigation.

2. User Friendly Design: Affordable web design 2.0 allows easy interaction and promotes superior browsing experience for the visitors of the website. This objective is fulfilled with the help of several key design elements such as simplicity, better layout, better highlights and better presentation.

3. Design Elements: Web design 2.0 is flawless with its central layout, flowing fonts and flashes and great templates. The graphical representation is of unmatched quality with elegant looks and easy optimization. Web design 2.0 is also more appealing due to its own exclusive visual effects and logos.

4. Aesthetic Appeal: Web design 2.0 is also rich in aesthetic appeal. Any website requires the feel and look of great background element. Aesthetic looks like reflections, shadows and other elements contribute a great deal to the look of the website.

5. Self-explanatory Icons: web design 2.0 also provides for innovative icons which help in easy understanding of simple and plain text. These icons basically provide the concept better and are used in highly important areas of the website. These icons not only contain text but also are a sort of navigation for the visitors.

We can say that professional web design 2.0 is a modern technology that aims at bringing the elegant and simplified yet professional outlook of any website. It targets to achieve the viewers mass because of its easy operation and eye-catching looks. Summing it up, it is basically the use of all features to minimum the effort of making a cool website.

Joanna Gadel is doing extensive research on web design Sydney. She works for a reputed Australian firm based on professional web design and shares her knowledge on web design as a great support for visitors searching that theme.

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• Use Fonts Wisely To Make An Appealing Website
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You may have tried free hosting and decided you want to get away from free hosting and the banners and ads that come along with it.  The only thing is, you won’t have the advantage of the site builder software that most of these sites offer you.

Well stay with me because there are free web design tools available that even beginners can use.  There are software programs, free utilities and generators for just about every phase of web designing. Here is a survey of some of the free tools at your disposal.

Free Web Design Tools

Web space. This is essential.  Well, though the prices of web space hosting have gone down, you may still be hankering for a totally free hosting package. I’m guessing you want a place for a business venture – right? Well bear in mind that many free hosting services prohibit commercial use, so as a business or an internet marketer, you may not have this option.  In truth, paying for hosting is a small price for starting your business.

Here is the host I use.  They are the best host on the net – and they have also been officially recognized as the best internet host for WordPress Blogs, with unlimited space, tons of features, and easy one-click  installation for  WordPress and many other utilities :

Domain name. Well, you COULD get one of these for free.  Yes, believe it or not, there are some free domain name hosting services around – the bait of a free domain name is used by quite a few hosting providers to get you on board. But beware!

The drawback is you don’t get the name registered as yours – it is maintained by the server owners. So if you ever want to change hosting, you will lose your domain name.  Some people might be happy with that, if they want to remain anonymous.

You really need to think how important the domain is to you and how long you plan to stay in business if considering this option.  My own advice would be to stay right away from it if you are at all serious about developing your own presence on the net.  Get your very own domain and it will truly be your home on the net.

Website Design Templates. These are the ultimate in free website design tools. If you need a site up and running ASAP, download a finished template and start editing. You will have to make the content and maybe some graphics, but the basic coding for the home page and supporting pages will be there already.  You will need to have some knowledge of HTML, though.

WordPress Templates. The same goes for WordPress Templates. While vendors make a strong case for the superiority of bought templates (no doubt), free WP templates CAN be quite effective – though at times there are issues with coding.  If it’s a blog you want,  search around and you will find plenty of nice free WordPress Templates to choose from. You may have to be prepared to experiment a bit to find one that you can manage – that’s all.

Color Scheme Generators. Are you having a hard time deciding what colors to use for your website? Try online color combination generators. Getting a color theme is essential to achieving a unified look. It is also an easy way to find matching (i.e. complementary) colors. Some shades just don’t go well with others, you know. Other color-related tools let you pick colors from the screen (color pickers), or convert a color hue into hex format so you can insert it manually into your code.

HTML Validators. If you are doing your own HTML (and I’ll talk about that later) you will want to make sure that your website code is fully compliant with standards. You can use free website design tools that can check your code for errors. This will help ensure your website works properly. There are also sites that will check it for you.  (More on this later).

Fonts.   See my previous post fora general discussion about the use of fonts.  When it comes to fancy fonts, there’s something you need to be aware of.

• There are two ways to use fancy fonts on your website. You can install them on your system and use them as font styles in your pages, in which case only people who happen to have the same fonts installed on their computers can see them displayed correctly.
• Or you can use the fonts in your graphics and save them as graphic files for banners, titles and buttons,and keep the main fonts in your text simple – a much better option.

Clipart. All is not lost if you need graphics but can’t even draw a line.  Just get some free clipart. I’ll post up a bunch of links shortly. Just try and keep some continuity of style in the images you use on your site.

These are just some of the free website design tools you can find. In spite of what many over-priced web designers and software vendors tell you, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on these things. Usually all these sites ask for is a link back to their pages.

I’ll be adding more resources soon on both free and inexpensive website design tools.

Patricia

Related Posts:

• 10 Deadly Sins of Website Design – 2
• 10 Deadly Sins of Website Design – 1
• Find Cheap Website Design Software
• Professional Website Design 2.0 Styles
• Use Fonts Wisely To Make An Appealing Website

The world of fonts is an exciting one, with so many different styles to choose from.  You may go looking and find something that really excites you, but remember this – fancy fonts are fine used sparingly in graphics, but they are a total pain if overdone.

You need above all to be careful that the main reading  font on your site is articulate, can be easily discerned, and is pleasing to the eye. And I’ll talk more about this later.

As an exercise, try comparing  sites -  Craigslist and Barnes & Noble are ideal examples.  The sites are comparable in that each has plenty of text, but the font quality varies greatly.

• Craigslist offers a good selection of categories, but all of their text is identical size, color and font, except for the occasional title, which is still just boldened and increased merely a font size or 2.
• Alternatively, Barnes & Noble offers a great illustration showing how text should be used to distinguish between category titles, sub-titles, menu bars, prices, reviews and plenty of other similar classes. The text on Barnes and Noble’s site varies in font colors, styles and sizes. This makes it simple to quickly scan the Web site for the material one is looking for.

Note however, that if you decide to go in for varying your font sizes and styles, you need to have  consistency in what you do.  For example, you may decide to apply Georgia for your headings, and Arial for your body text.  Decide what you want to do, and apply it consistently so your reader subconsciously knows what to expect as they read your site.  The reader actually uses font style as a clue to identifying what text they are looking at.

As you know, it is beneficial to use some variation in color between text on a Web page, but on the same note don’t use too many colors that the web site becomes confusing.

It’s a mistake to underestimate the importance of font to the look and usability of your site.  If you use fonts in the wrong way, it can actually detract from the impression created by your pages.  So take some care in  selecting a font that’s straightforward to read.  Then users will navigate more easily and find what they need at a glance.

And if they can do that, you have a much higher chance of them returning – and return visitors are just what you are looking for!

Related Posts:

• Professional Website Design 2.0 Styles
• 10 Deadly Sins of Website Design – 2
• 10 Deadly Sins of Website Design – 1
• Find Cheap Website Design Software
• Free Website Design Tools For Beginners