Designing Your Website and Avoiding Disaster

Ok, you have built yourself a website, good work! Wasn’t that fun and exciting! Now you are ready to make it do some work for you. You want to make some money off of it, don’t you? What to do first? Where do you start? You have a lot of ideas in your brain, but need to figure out which direction to go with first? You want to make this website as successful as possible, but where do you start? You want to be original, like nothing else out there on the Internet, right?

Besides maybe some home decorating, when do we ever get an opportunity to decorate or design something that is really important. We start changing something small here, then something small there. Take something away here and replace it with something else there. Before you know it, presto, we have something completely different after a little bit of changing here and there.

We have made changes that give our site lots of color, added a lot of graphic animation, and we feel much more attractive. In addition, we have also added a lot of content. All this stuff makes a website standout, helps our cause, will make us money, doesn’t it? We believe this will be good for business, right?

Wait just a minute. Look closer and what do you see? Do we really need all that content? Yes, we know that Google loves content, but is this the kind of content that Google really loves and wants to see on our site? I must admit that I was once guilty of thinking all content is created equal, that all content is the same. Well, it took some time, but I figured out that not all content is the same, and must not be treated equal. I found out that if you have constructed a business site, your content should be focused on doing business. You need to make it interesting and helpful to keep your readers attention and prevent them from leaving your site. You need to give them something that will entertain them, make it a pleasure for them to read. Color and graphics is not that kind of content you need to get your mission accomplished.

There are lots of websites out there that use articles for content, for good reason. Articles are probably the best content you can have on a website. Most of these articles one will find useful, informative, and at the same time entertaining. What can you do to improve your articles and put them head and shoulder over others online? Articles are really not that hard to write. You can either just pick a subject and start writing or find some from an article directory and rewrite them to fit your needs and requirements.

How about color? Do we really need our visitors to feel like putting on their sunglasses to avoid being blinded? There are some colors that a lot of people use online that are way too bright and can be sensitive to their viewers eyes. If you feel you really need to use some color, tone them down and use colors that are soothing to the human eye, such as earth tones, browns, beiges, gray, etc. Strive to use colors that will not distress viewers and make them run away for their lives.

How about animated graphics. I think most of us are guilty of using them without giving them much thought, at one time or another. It is easy to get carried away with them, being so cute and funny, and cool to look at. On closer examination, are they? I think too many flashing lights is not all that appealing to the human eye. Human focus is redirected from what is important for these viewers to be paying attention to. What is important is the text. The message of the website lies in the text on your website. If you feel you need some animated graphics on your site, try limiting that to just one. Do your best to see that your guest is focusing his eyes on your text, your message, rather than the useless graphics.

When I am talking about text, I don’t mean just any text. Make sure your text is loaded with the right keywords, or in other words, make it keyword rich. Spread them out throughout your website. Use every opportunity to get one in there. Even put a few in your article title. This is extremely important for recognition with search engine optimization.

Learn from my mistakes. I have made enough of them to write a book about, not just this small article. At one time or another, I have made all of these mistakes. I didn’t notice how loud my colors really were until I purchased a new monitor and realized how faded out the color was on my old one. After realizing how irritating my site was due to the outlandish colors, I decided quickly to make changes and business increased significantly in a short time. Those bright reds and greens became a thing of the past, replaced with shades of brown, beige, and subdued yellow. It took a change in computer screens to realize the error of my ways.

I have taken control of my site and made the necessary corrections I have discussed to make my site more appealing and easier on the eye. Now, my visitors are buying more because I believe they stay a lot longer and feel more comfortable scanning and viewing what I want them to see, without all the distractions. You should take a good look at your site and make the changes I suggest here. You will not be disappointed.