Posts tagged ‘Website Design’
5 Ways to Lose Visitors
We all have a mental list of things that bother us about websites; things that send us scrambling to another site. The web is huge, competition is fierce and the best thing a webmaster 
can do is to adhere to the KISS principle. (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID). Users of the Intuit-Homestead SiteBuilder program to design sites need an awareness of what does and doesn’t work on the web. (more…)
Website Maintenance – Keep It In Good Shape
Spring is here! It’s a good time to get your Homestead-Intuit website in tip-top condition.
When was the last time you took a good close look at your website? We make quick changes now and then, but don’t usually pay attention to the big picture. A website can always use a bit of maintenance because errors tend to happen. A website that is error free is not only important for visitor retention, but is part of good search engine optimization as well.
Common Errors:
- Spelling errors – spell check is great but won’t pick up homonyms (two words pronounced the same, with different meanings); weather/whether, break/brake for example.
- Alignment errors – a misaligned list can make a site look sloppy and unprofessional
- Overlaps – the border and bullet elements in SiteBuilder add padding and can throw off the placement of elements. Finding these requires checking the site in different browsers as each browser handles coding a bit differently.
- Grammatical errors – Poor grammar can reflect negatively on your service or product.
- Outdated information or events that have passed scream site neglect.
- Broken links – they happen to the most diligent of webmasters.
- The dreaded red X – this happens too. An image name is changed or it’s moved from the original location breaking the link to the image/graphic.
- Stray element boxes should be eliminated. It’s easy to create a text box, get distracted and forget you made one. Using the Select All option will show all the elements on a page – including ones that shouldn’t be there.
- Check the spelling in your Meta Tags. Page titles, descriptions, and key words often contain errors. Copy and paste them either to Notepad or directly onto the page to check them.
We tend to see what we know/think should be there rather than what actually IS there. If you have a really good friend, willing family member or co-worker who has time on their hands, enlist them to help proof your site. A fresh pair of eyes can help pick out those errors that you might be overlooking. If you don’t have someone who can assist then look at your website in a different way when you proof it.
Proofing Your Site:
- Start at the back (last page) and work forward.
- Read from bottom to top.
- Copy the page content and paste it into notepad or Word and increase the font size.
Keeping your website in good shape will show visitors and the Search Engines that there is webmaster activity on the site making it more credible to both.
Download the free Website Design Guide to refresh your memory on the do’s and don’ts for websites and incorporate necessary changes when you are tuning up your site.
Website navigation – Is yours friendly?
Is your Homestead site chasing visitors away?
If your navigation isn’t simple and straightforward you could be losing customers. One stat claims that 1/2 of online sales are lost due to the result of a navigation that is poorly designed. That’s a pretty big number!
Your Home page is THE most important page of your site and it should be listed first in your navigation menu. Visitors look for the Home page link in the regular navigation so placing it elsewhere is a stopper for your potential customer. Every time you interrupt the flow of the visit you distract the visitor from their intended mission and make them focus on something other than finding/buying what they came for.
Can your visitor easily discern where each link in the navigation will take them or did you go with cute and clever link names that make the visitor stop and think about what that link refers to and where it may take them or what information it will yield?
Web users have two things in common:
- They are totally focused
- They are impatient
Using what you perceive as clever page names or icons without text in the menu can be another stopper for the visitor that sends them elsewhere.
Consistency counts. Is your navigation the same throughout your site? It should be in the same location on every page, maintain the same structure, look and feel. Again, you need to make this a smooth, effortless journey, not an Easter egg hunt.
Location, location, location. Where is your navigation? Ideally it should be directly below your Logo/Header or on the left hand side at the top. Placing it anywhere else is going to be a stop and think for your visitor. Don’t neglect your site visitor in the (perceived) interest of aesthetics.
Have they been there, done that? It is easy for visitors to a site to get confused as to whether or not they’ve already visited a page, this is especially true on larger sites. Using a regular link color and a visited link color, viewers can tell at a glance by the color change if they have seen a particular page.
How many times have you visited a site and had to get out the magnifying glass to read the menu? That menu is the life’s blood of a website yet designers/webmasters often use a tiny font and a light color for the navigation. This doesn’t mean you need to use a size 14 font in bold, black, but it does mean you should be sure the menu is easily read. Not everyone has 20/20 vision.
The success of a website involves many things, some big, some small, but navigation is VERY BIG. The webmaster who doesn’t follow some basic principles of good design could be chasing customers away.
Happy webbing!
Help With SiteBuilder Program for Intuit – Homestead Users
Support for the Homestead SiteBuilder program is available from both Homestead itself and from Homestead users who have built a comprehensive system to aid both inexperienced and seasoned users in getting the most from their Homestead web site …
Ethics in Web Design using Homestead Software
There are dozens of website designers available who use Homestead’s design software to build sites. Ethics and integrity in this business is the same as any other – treat your customer right and they will be a customer for a long time …
Debunking the “can’t be optimized” myth
Designing a website using Homestead’s site builder software allows a designer or site owner to create an attractive website that can be optimized for the search engines. Knowing what search engines need to rank a site and being informed about usability and implementing these standards allows the designer to create a successful website using the drag and drop SiteBuilder program. These sites have proven that they can rank/outrank sites built using programs like DreamWeaver, or templates or sites coded by hand.
Design fast loading pages
When designing a website fast loading pages are very important to the success of the site from the perspective of search engines and your site visitors. Here are some tips for creating pages that load quickly.
5 Don’ts of Web Design
There are some things that head up the Don’t list when designing a website. Here are 5 of the main things to avoid when you construct your site.
