The significance of a well-designed website to your online presence cannot be overstated. Many people mistakenly believe that having a superior product or service alone will guarantee success. However, to truly thrive online, you need both an excellent product or service and an outstanding website design. This is because people often equate the quality of your web design with the quality of your product or service. Just as people tend to judge a book by its cover, they also associate the quality of a business's website with its product or service.
To ensure your website accurately represents your business, here are ten tips to consider:
Using banner exchange programs can make your website appear amateurish. While the promise of free traffic may be tempting, the truth is that banner programs are generally ineffective for new websites. Resist the urge to clutter your pages with numerous banner programs as they are unlikely to benefit you.
Avoid making your site excessively busy. Sites filled with animated images, fluorescent text and colors, crowded pictures, and large text can be overwhelming and off-putting to visitors. Ensure your site is clean and organized to encourage visitors to stay and explore.
Clip-art graphics can make your site appear unprofessional and discourage potential customers. Invest time in learning how to create your own graphics. Adobe Photoshop is a recommended tool if you can afford it. If you're on a budget, consider using a free demo of Paint Shop Pro from Jasc Software, which is almost as good as Photoshop but at a fraction of the cost.
Your visitors are interested in how your product or service can benefit them, not about you. Keep the focus on them and the advantages your product or service can provide.
Since there are no standard codes for the internet, different web browsers interpret codes differently. This can result in your site appearing perfect on one browser but terrible on another. Regular testing can help you identify and fix any issues that may be driving away visitors.
Poor grammar or spelling can make your site appear unprofessional. Ensure your pages are free from spelling and grammatical errors by running them through a spell check and having someone else proofread them.
A site that changes designs, backgrounds, and navigation systems can be confusing and disorienting for visitors. Keep your website's design consistent to make it clear to visitors where they are on your site.
Backgrounds can make a site appear unprofessional. If you're unsure, stick with a plain white background with contrasting text for a clean, easy-to-read look.
Use images that are small in terms of file size to ensure your site loads quickly. You can compress your images to a more reasonable size using tools like Ulead's SmartSaver Pro.
A website with numerous conflicting font types, colors, and sizes can appear unprofessional. Keep your fonts consistent and limit yourself to one or two, or at most three, different fonts. Also, keep the size of your fonts reasonable.
By following these tips, you can create a professional, user-friendly website that accurately represents your business and its products or services.
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