When it comes to YOUR website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure each piece of the detail performs its purpose. Here are five (5) important general ‘rules of thumb’ you should adhere to make sure your website performs as you desire it to perform.
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 flowers or real purpose. Do not just give your visitors have a reason to ‘click out’ or hit the ‘back’ button! Give them the value proposition of your website 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 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.
3) Have Simple Clear Navigation Buttons, Widgets or Boxes
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 do not know how to navigate your site, they will leave your site, very, very fast. In fact the average time people spend on a website is less than 8 seconds. Get it?
4) Make Your Site Easy to Get Around In
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. Do not allow your visitors to become confused as to where they are on your website or they will ‘abandon ship’!
5) Avoid Using Audio on Your Site
If your visitors are going to stay a long time on your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they are 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 — and it is VERY easy to find the ‘KILL AUDIO’ button or MUTE button. Either will work fine. Always ask yourself…self, do YOU like audio on the websites you visit?
Remember, ‘do to others like you like to be done to’. When you visit websites you like, what do they do to make you like their sites? Get the drift?