I discussed the speed of your website load, and now we'll
discuss element 2:
2. Looks great: Please remember that this subject has so many
opinions among so many people that it really is up to you in the
end. What you think looks great, may look stupid or overdone to
someone else. If you get criticism in feedback from your
visitors, keep it in mind if it is constructive. We'll just
discuss a few things to help you decide for yourself.
The first and best thing to do is to find out what the big guys
are doing. You know the sites that get huge hits. Study these
sites. What about them is pleasing to your eyes? Is it a certain
way the navigation links are presented? Is it the location of
certain elements on the page? What elements make up these
websites that make them easy to look at? Do they have really
cool graphics? Do they present the content in an easy-to-look-at
way? Notice that they don't usually overcrowd the page. A lot of
junk crammed into one page turns people off. Their lettering and
graphics are clean-looking. No raggedy edges (aliasing). Keep
their formats in mind when you design yours. What colors do they
stick to? How do they present their menus/links? Time them. How
fast do they load? What elements on each webpage catch your eye
first. Look at these websites with a different eye than just
somebody visiting there. These websites were designed by
professionals doing this for a living. What types of
presentation do they know brings people back. Look at it from an
artistic and marketing eye. What about these sites provides a
lot of marketing material?
Don't copy them, of course, but keep in mind where their
navigation links go, where the logo usually goes, how much
content is on the main page, how the navigation links they have
are pretty standard.
You'll notice that almost every really good page has some of the
following links:
Contact Us
About Us
Help
Feedback to Webmaster
General Feedback
Links to other sites related
Home (on all pages except home, of course)
Back Buttons, Next Buttons, Paging for pages that go together
Search this site for....
These are just a few of the common links that you'll see on
really successful pages. Step back and look at your page from a
marketing and artistic viewpoint. Would you stay long?
If you need help with the "Looks Great" part of your website and
you insist on doing the design yourself, here are some pretty
good sites to give you help:
http://www.webmonkey.com http://www.flashkit.com
http://www.macromedia.comSo
3. It's links actually work: I've mentioned this in another
article, but it is worth mentioning again. Test and test and
test your site for broken links. Put it through some very
exhaustive checks to make sure all the links people click
actually go somewhere and to make sure the places they go when
they click are where they were supposed to end up in the first
place. Have friends or coworkers test the links for you to get a
second, fresh eye to look. It helps to put an email link at the
bottom of each page that says something like: Problems with our
site? Email the Webmaster. This will correct more mistakes than
you'll ever correct on your own. People love to gripe about how
your website doesn't work as advertised. It's good criticism for
you. When responding to them, respond politely and thank them
for pointing out this problem. When I return in Part 3, I’ll
talk about quick response to requests by your prospective
customers. Thanks for joining me!
About the author:
Lynne Schlumpf is the CEO of Route 66 Cyber Cafe, Inc.,
http://www.r66cci.com, a Web hosting and design company
specializing in promoting websites for new owners, building
affordable e-commerce sites, and providing reliable web hosting
solutions as an affiliate of Virtualis Incorporated.
