When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every detail to make sure it serves its purpose. Here are 6 important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.
- Do not use splash pages (welcome 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". As welcome pages they have know real function and any time you give your visitor a choice of continuing the also have the choice of leaving.
The only splash page that you want to be using is the fast loading advert splash page used in traffic exchanges.
- 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 valueable 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.
- 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 dropdown menus.
If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
- 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"!
- 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.
Add a picture of yourself to the site, let people see you and they will feel more comfortable about trusting you. Along with this add full contact details, including a physical addresss.
A word of warning, use a photo that you are pleased with. Not your passport picture, or the one grabbed from your webcam 10 seconds after you got out of bed or the one from that party where you were dancing on the table.
You have all seen photos on the net that you have thought , WHY.
Dont make yours another.
