5 Tips For a Professional Web Site
As a web designer, I find many pet peeves when I browse the web. Many things that I find just make me want to pull my hair out and ask what were they thinking? A web site is supposed to reflect a professional image, many do not fare so well. Here are some tips to improve your professionalism.
Tip #1 Putting a counter on your web site is tacky! If you are trying to sell something you will want to give visitors the impression that you are constantly making sales. Thus in turn making them want to join the “crowd”and buy. But if an average consumer were to visit your web site to possibly buy your products, they would see that hit counter and make two assumptions. One, this business must not be very good, because the number of hits is lower than expected. And two, this company web site must have been designed by a child.
Tip #2 Dancing hamsters and jumping dogs should not be on a business web site! An over abundance of animations can slow a web site down, not to mention it looks amateur. Some animations are okay, just as long as they are helping promote your product.
Tip #3 Java applet menus are evil. If your web site uses a Java applet for it’s menu, you are in a world of trouble. Applet menus take a long time to load and most of the time can crash a visitors browser. In turn making them never want to return again. Not to mention that search engines can’t crawl through a Java applet.
Tip #4 Avoid making your web site too wide. If you get tired of scrolling to the right to read content and then having to scroll back left to read the next line, why would anyone else like it? Most customers will not tolerate it.
Tip #5 Do not put your personal email address on your site. Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etcetera is not professional. Take this for example, “For more product information please email me john32392@yahoo.com”. Instead get a branded email address such as john@johnsbusiness.com. It’s just speaks for itself.
Although putting an email address on your site is good, I would highly stress not doing it. In today’s cyber world, there exists spam bots. These bots will visit your site for only one thing; your email address. After that is collected, you will begin to get spammed.
A contact form would be the next alternative, but again, there is a danger. Spammers will attempt to use your contact form to send out their spam messages. Once they hijack your contact form, it would seem that you would be the one responsible for sending out junk mail to millions. This in turn could get you in a lot of trouble as well as getting kicked off your web space by your web host. Make sure that your contact form has the necessary filters to filter out hijack attempts.
In closing, with a professional web site, you will get the right response you deserve.
