Monday, April 18, 2011

The 5 Biggest Mistakes In Web Design

The number one mistake in web design is to create your website using Flash technology. Your visitors will not be that impressed with your beautiful Flash site so don’t waste your time and money with this. People are looking for information not how good your web designer’s Flash skills are – give them what they are looking for.


Even though high speed connections are quite common, not everyone has them and by adding Flash you will make your site slow to load and risk a lot of visitors going elsewhere. Give people what they want straight away as that is what they are expecting and it would be stupid to disappoint them wouldn’t it? For all your UK design needs go to web design UK.


The second mistake is trying to make your website look like a catalog with hundreds of links to different products on the front page and subsequent pages. This is normally done due to the fear of missing out on a sale or offer and people believe that they have to display everything. There is no evidence to support that this works.


There are several studies of online marketing which demonstrate that too much choice often ends up as no choice and this will not make you any sales. Information overload like this will overwhelm your visitors and they will look elsewhere as they don’t want to experience this. It is better to organize your site into product categories and help your visitors further by adding a search box.


The next big mistake is not to have your site optimized for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Many will tell you that your message to your visitors is much more important than worrying about the search engines. While there is truth in this, it is quite easy to write for your visitors and optimize for the search engines at the same time.


The smart thing to do is to see what people are typing into the search engines when they are looking for plumbers in London. As an example we will choose the term “Plumber in London" as the keywords most will be using. So it makes sense t o optimize your site for these keywords. You need these keywords to appear a few times in your site and in the description and title of the web page. By doing this you will provide assistance to the search engines and they will understand that you are offering plumbing services in London.


The fourth mistake is having too many images on your web site. If you have too many graphics it will distract your visitors from your sales message and also increase the load time of your page on the Internet. You could end up getting your site penalized in the top search engines if you have too many images. You have seven seconds to interest your reader according to many online surveys. If your site takes longer than that to load they will hit the back button faster than you can say “too slow".


Many people trust their web design to marketing novices who have no idea how to create compelling content which is the final mistake to make. Your web site should be your shop window where you want people to buy what you have to offer, contact you for more information or join your email newsletter list for further communications. A better solution is to hire a professional copywriter for your sales message or write it yourself while letting your web designer create a nice looking design for you.

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