Web design that keeps visitors

© Illa Maden November 2006

Keep visitors first-then keep them coming back

 Web design is important, because your website represents you and your presence on the internet.

If you have a home based business website, then you had better think carefully about your web design. In a current study of online consumers who regularly shop online (not browsing-but buying) load time was their main priority. This was given more importance even than product price.

With that in mind, it is important to keep web design very clean and uncluttered. You can make more web pages. It doesn't all have to be on one page.

Since load time is of such importance, graphics should be kept to a minimum and when used kept to a reasonable size.

When considering load time, another feature of web design to consider is flash. Flash has a number of negative aspects in regard to designing web pages. First of all, it uses a lot of bandwidth and is slow to load. It can also cause malfunctions in navigation, and even lose visitors at times when they try to use the back button.

Designing web pages with flash can also cost you in the search engines if you are looking for organic traffic. Although search engines are catching up and getting smarter, flash is still a difficult area for them and hard to index.

On top of all this, adding flash to your web design can alienate some visitors. A lot of people find it downright irritating.

Another feature of web design that can be very positive, can also have a downside. That is audio. Offering audio on a website can increase conversion, however, it is best if the visitor has control over whether they have to hear it or not.

Navigation should be easy

Offer good, clear navigation. Make it easy for visitors to get from place to place on your website.

Good web design offers good usable content, plenty of white space, bullet points and headlines that make a page easy to read.

Plan your web design with people of all ages and various capabilities in mind. Avoid using muted colors for your text, and make text large enough to easily read.

Keep colors that are vibrant or harsh to areas that only require short term viewing. Adding some vibrant colors in web design can perk up a website, but use judgement. Three main colors that harmonize are enough when desinging web pages. Too many colors add confusion.

Give visitors them a reason to return

Plan the web design of your online home business for the long term. Set up your navigation scheme so it is easy to add pages. Add fresh content to your website frequently to keep both visitors and spiders coming back.

Plan your initial web design, and pursue any future design changes with your visitors in mind.

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