Signs of an Amateur Website
When landing at a website, what makes you say ‘yikes’ and click the back button? For me, it is cheesy music with no “off” button.
Signs of Webmaster Newbies
All of us have been “newbies” at one point in our webmastering lives. We scoured the javascript sites, the dhtml sites and graphics sites for cool stuff that we thought would make our sites look impressive.
First timer’s websites are easily spotted with their smorgasboard of javascripts, animated gifs, sounds and other components. The problem is, this makes a site look amateur.
Creating an Amateur Image
You might have a brick and mortar business that’s been around for the last decade, with tons of satisfied customers.On the Internet, however, you are somewhat anonymous.To establish trust, you want to have a professional image. When designing your website, here are some things to avoid so that your business does not look amateur or like a fly-by-night operation:
- Dark, heavy backgrounds with hard-to-read fonts - For a business website, it’s best to use a plain white background and black text so that your visitors can read it easily. Some first timers are tempted to have “artistic” backgrounds with different colored text fonts. Not only is this hard to read, but if you have a product line, it is difficult to make pictures of your product line blend in with the background.
- Pages that are larger than the browser screen - There’s nothing more irritating that trying to read a web page that scrolls across the screen. Generally, web users use 1024 x 768 as their desktop resolution. Try to stay within those confines.
- Sound effects - Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music, but even if you discovered music that appeals to every single person alive, don’t make it automatically load on your site. Wtih a music site, there are scripts that you can use that will give your visitor the option to click play. The same goes with audio advertisements or other background sound effects — have a pause or “off” button.
- “Cool” effects - About 8 or 9 years ago, it was real “cool” to have a flash presentation on the index page. Most everyone was doing this. This does nothing to establish your online reputation. Flash introductions involve a lot of effort to create and when it is all said and done, many look silly. These introductions can take a long time to load and generally, people will not view them. Another thing that beginners think is “cool” are page fading effects, animated images and scrolling text. When I first started designing pages, I added these things, thinking it made me look like I was adept with web design. However, the cold reality is that these effects are a waste of time and a turnoff. I’ve seen some sites, designed by supposed design specialists, where the links scroll by really fast and you have to “aim and shoot” just to be able to click a link. Don’t waste your time adding in these effects. People visiting your site are looking for specific information or products and are generally not looking to be impressed with the scripts you have embedded.
- No clear navigation scheme - Many people enter a website by the interior pages, not at the home page. You need to give them a way to easily navigate through your site. Left and top menus are the most popular and are therefore familiar to your visitors. Regardless of where you place your menu, make sure it’s consistent throughout your entire site. A surefire indicator of an amateur web design is the absense of a navigation menu.
- No search feature - Particularly if you have a large product line that you are selling or if you have a content rich site, always include a search box to help your visitors. Google’s fre search box is a tool that you can use if you don’t know how to include a search feature.This creates a “user friendly” site and shows that you care about your visitor’s experience.
- “Secret” prices - If you’re selling products, include the price. Don’t force your visitor to click through the shopping cart just to find out what the cost will be — many of them will not do it, anyway.
- Policies - An amateur site will not include privacy policies, terms of use and, when selling products or services, returns and shipping policies. In this vein, you should also provide contact information, particularly if you are selling products or services.
- Under construction pages - “Under construction” or “coming soon” pages are a surefire way to announce that you’re an amateur. If you are not done with a page yet, do not link to it. Once the page is completed and uploaded, then you can add a link to your menu and sitemap.
- No online shopping cart - If you are selling a product, provide a way for people to purchase your product online. When people are looking to buy something online, they usually intend to buy it immediately. Chances are, they don’t want to mail a check or money order. If you don’t have a merchant account, consider Paypal or, in the case of digital products, consider using a service such as Clickbank.There are free shopping carts available for people who already have a merchant account, such as Mals-e.com, which also givesyou the ability to offer an affiliate program.
What’s Your Beef?
Newbie or pro, you can voice your opinion about what makes a stinking website at the NotGuru’s survey about poor website design. If you’re looking for software, giveaways and other things to help your fledgling online business, the NotGuru blog provides plenty of resources. Take the site design survey today and feel free to submit your comments - the results are quite interesting.
Tags: javascript, newbies, sound, survey, Web Design, website design