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5 Important Rules in Website Design
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every
minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose.
Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your
website performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website.
They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or
"click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with
no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the
"back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the
splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore
banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real
estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant
affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they
want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu
so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from
complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop-down menus. If your
visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want
to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that
moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or
navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors
because confusion means "abandon ship"!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your
content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio
looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make
sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would
work fine.
5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back
A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account
for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to
convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a
site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just
melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the
following methods:
1) Start a forum, chat room or shout box
When you start a forum, chat room or shout box, you are providing your
visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers
-- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a
sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to
your site almost religiously every day.
2) Start a web log (blog)
Keep an online journal or more commonly known as a blog, on your site
and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are
curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if
you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility
as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind
the website.
3) Carry out polls or surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should
definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for
visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website.
Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the
target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about
the results.
4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games
Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day,
and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your
site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of
entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score
winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.
5) Update frequently with fresh content
Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your
visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This
is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting
returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because
of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that
looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh
bites!
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