Roz designz: E-tip #7|Tacky Vs A Website of Excellence- Helpful hints to a better web experience | Informative Articles on Marketing and Designing your Website

Overall Design: this is the key element of your website. Each of the following hints comes into play in the overall design. Web excellence is experienced when there has been careful planning and continued maintenance of the site. This will lead to a potential client adding your website to their favorites for future reference and also sending your link to a friend or co-worker. Having these options available on the website make it easier for your visitor to do this.

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Graphics & Photos: these add a wonderful visual to express what you are all about and how appealing your products look[something they cannot do without]. Graphics can bring attention to an area or express a meaning without having a text link present. XP Icons are all the rage lately of navigational links. Having a photo of you and your co-workers on an about us page helps to make your visitor at ease with you, your business, church or ministry. Bringing a personal touch to their web experience.

Color Scheme: choosing colors that best expresses your content is a must. Certain color schemes convey different impressions. For instance; navy blue has a professional, corporate and overall feeling of trustworthiness, where as yellow brings a vibrant happy outlook and feel to your products and services. Red is an attention grabber. Usually 3 or 4 colors are the maximum used throughout a website. Sometimes color gradients come into play for emphasis. Using too many colors or all intense contrasts in color can leave the onlooker with a headache or eyestrain. Here are a couple of resources to help you plan or maybe change existing colors.
•Color Matters
•Great Web Color Sells

Font Choice: the best fonts to use are Arial, Verdana, New Times Roman and a newer artsy font called Georgia. Also for child-oriented websites try Comic Sans. For articles and informational text a legible text is best in a 12pt or 10pt font size. Your visitor may want to print out the text for future reference. Having a link available for a text version of the article/information is always a plus. I use the printer-friendly version quite often when reading up on web design from Site Pro News. A larger font for emphasis is great as long as it is used sparingly otherwise you could have the appearance of a novice design. A professional readable look is easily obtained using the fonts listed in this paragraph.

Navigation: simplicity is key in navigation. The most common navigation setup is on the left side of the viewing screen. You definitely do not want your visitors hunting around for where to click to next on a page or scrolling aimlessly trying to learn your navigation system. Creativity is great and should stay with in the means of the topic. Make sure your text links and icons say what they mean.

• XP Icons

Keep links clear, readable and in the same location on every page. This is good because the visitor can spend more time browsing your site. Simplicity, consistency and clarity are something to revamp if it is not in place already. A good rule of thumb is to think of navigation as something that is more on a subconscience level and not something your visitor needs to work at. This gives the visitor alot more time to search your site for information or order products.

Content: visitors are looking for information that is easily accessible, relevant, updated and on the cutting edge of the marketplace that you are involved in. Quality must rule over quantity. There is a fine line between “just enough” and “way too much”. Articles written in a professional manner is best and be sure to choose them carefully. Poorly written or misspelling will be a reflection on you and your company. Take some time and do a search for articles that best reflect your website topic. Articles, links or information should be an enhancement when placing content on you site and promote a good experience. See Article: I Don’t like to Write: the importance of informative articles on your website.

Contact Information: this is crucial in developing an online trust with your visitors. People need to know something about you. An about our company page is always a good plus for your visitors to get to know you a little bit better, and adding a few photos is a nice touch. The Internet can be a little cold without that human contact so this is a perfect way to close that gap. Adding a contact us page is also very beneficial, it gives a person a means to talk with you [a live human] if they care to. This page should include anyway that your visitor/client could get in touch with you via email, telephone, fax, beeper, cell phone, or mailing address. Making yourself available will bring a better web experience to onlookers and dedicated clients.

Technology Updates: the Internet is in constant change and technology is still advancing at a very rapid pace. Periodically checking your website for anything out dated or broken links of websites no longer in existence is something that has to be done preferably on a monthly basis. Websites are constantly changing and testing those out source links are worth the effort to maintain. Not to mention search engine rankings. A visitor can find it irritating when they are looking to obtain information from your site and the links are broken.

Tweaking your website needs to be at the top of your priority list. Remember there are 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of websites and if a visitor has any hassle at all with navigating through or obtaining the information needed from your website, they will click to the next website. It’s as simple as that with no second thoughts. Experts say that we have a window of about 2 minutes tops to get a visitor interested in our website. This E-tip will help with some hints to bring them back again and again.

Resources:
• Top 10 Ways Websites Make Me Suffer; by: Jason O'Conner
• Nine effective tips for improving your website's usability
• www.sitepronews.com/: Free Internet marketing resources, web site development.

Further Reading:
• Informative Articles: What you need to know to market and promote your website effectively.
• Search Engine Optimization Standards for Website Placement, Ranking and Positioning