Website Design Elements To Avoid

When designing your website, you should present to your visitors an easy to use, high quality, and most importantly, a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you have the greatest product ever produced; if your website is poorly designed you won't be able to retain visitors long enough to get your point across, much less make a sale. In defining a  "good design", we're not just talking about a good graphical design. in fact there are many components which contribute to a good website design:

• accessibility design

• interface or layout design,

• user experience design and the most obvious, which is

• graphic design.

Below, you will find some features of truly bad web designs I've encountered while surfing the web. Compare your site against these features and use this as a checklist. If you find anything on the list that is also on your site, you should seriously consider making some design changes to your site!

1) Background Music

This is often the mark of a beginning web designer. The music can sound nice at first, but imagine that you visit the site 100 times each day.  It won't take long before the music becomes VERY annoying. If it annoys you, imagine how it'll annoy your new visitors!  If your site involves music in some way - as in selling CDs or mp3s, or maybe you have a band website - you might want or need to make music available to your visitors. In this case, you should make the music a proactive choice for your visitor by having them click on a link to start the music. Just remember to have the sound turned off by default. Another consideration when using background music is that it takes longer for your site to download to your visitors computer.  This won't usually be an issue for visitors with a high speed connection, but dial-up users will have to wait longer to view your site. A longer wait means a greater chance that your visitor will just click away, which is not the desired action you want your visitors to take!

2) Font/Color Selection and Text Sizing

When creating the text to use for your website, don't choose a font that is hard to read. For instance, some sites use a script font that while it looks pretty, it is very difficult to read. The color of your font should also be considered. If you have a dark background, you don't want to use a dark colored font. That combination will make it difficult for your visitors to read what you have to say. Basically, use a light colored font with a dark background and a dark colored font with a light colored background. After choosing a legible font, make sure to use a font size that will be conducive to easy reading by your site's visitors. Just remember that it doesn't matter how good  your website's content is if it can't be read by your visitors!

3) Annoying Pop-up Windows

Popup windows are screens that "pop-up" on your monitor (without you clicking anything) when you visit a website. Most often these are used as extra commercials to try to entice you to buy something that the site owner is pushing. There are free "pop-up blocker" programs that you can get to eliminate most of these annoyances, however new technology will not allow you to block all of them. Most website visitors view these pop-ups as annoyances and may actually avoid your website if you use them. I recommend NOT using pop-ups. Any important information that you need to convey to your visitors should be conveyed in the content of your website. Don't take a chance on losing your visitor due to what they would consider an annoyance.

Just remember that as a web designer your job is to make sure the website does what it's meant to do effectively. Avoid the above mistakes and allow your site to communicate efficiently and effectively.

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