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Hi everyone,
I thought this pointers might be of interest.
Cheers,
Leo
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Top 7 Tips to Keep from Driving Away Your Web Site Guests:
The Internet is millions and millions of pages deep. It's hard
enough to get people to your site, let alone keep them there for
a while. A site designer should always strive to make their
site as inclusive as possible for the majority of visitors.
With that goal in mind, let's look at common mistakes that send
traffic in the other direction.
1. Access Time - If it takes too long to load your page, no
one will. Placing all your content in tables, large image
files, too many images, a slow server, slow loading Java
applets, and total file size of the page all effect load
time. Slow loading pages do one thing, they give a lot of
people index finger exercise as they hit their back button!
2. Information Overload - Don't put too much information on
one page. A page should never be more than four screen
lengths (click the scroll bar four times, if you're not at
the bottom of the page, it's too long). Three or less
screen lengths is ideal. If your pages are longer than that,
look for ways to break up the content into more specific
groupings and highlight the groupings in a menu so visitors
can find just what they're interested in with more precision
and timeliness.
3. Under Construction Pages - These were cute when they first
appeared in 1996, but now just shout "Newbie" to anyone with
any net savvy. Wait until the content is developed before
putting up a link to it. It is ok to mention what is coming
down the road if you must, but don't send guests to a page
they just have to page back from because there is no content.
4. Horizontal scroll - Nothing annoys visitors more than having
to scroll right, scroll left, scroll right, scroll left -
just to read a page. Web sites designed at 800x600 screen
resolution are *user unfriendly* for surfers at 640x480 -
and approximately half of Internet surfers are at this
setting. Surf at 800x600 if you like, but design at 640x480
if you want a user friendly site.
5. Auto-play Sounds - Many people surf the Internet at work,
school, and other public places. The last thing they want is
music coming from their computer that gives them away.
Others like to listen to their choices, like Real Audio.
Auto-play files (embedded midi songs, etc.) play at the same
time as their chosen broadcast so it interferes with their
listening preference. Offer a choice, or at least a control
to turn it off.
6. Browser Compatibility - Be sure to check your code in at
least IE and Netscape. Now that they are both free there are
few good reasons not to. What may work fine on your browser
could crash your visitor's browser. No one will return to a
page that crashes them. Java is a major cause of computer
crashes. Always warn guests that the next page contains
Java. Java applets run off of the visitors computer and use
memory resources. Machines with little memory muscle will
crash. Even a high octane machine may crash that has many
programs already open or encounters poorly written code, and
there's plenty of that around.
7. Bleeding Edge Technology - Java, cascading style sheets,
Active X, XML, etc. are all whiz-bang cool gizmos. But since
the technologies are not supported by all browsers and can
cause a computer to crash or a page not to load, they should
be used with caution. It's wise to stay 1 - 2 years behind
the bleeding edge to keep your site useable for the vast
majority.
Follow these 7 rules for site design and you will be ensured
your guests are not leaving because of poorly a conceived design
strategy. If you have interesting and useful content, you
should enjoy traffic that visits more than your index page.
Today's Top7Business Article Was Submitted By Boogie Jack.
Boogie Jack's Web Depot - http://www.boogiejack.com Now
serving over a half million page views per month! Subscribe
to my monthly newsletter for an entertaining yet enlightening
look at all things Internet. Send any email to:
mailto:almost-a-newsletter-subscribe@egroups.com
__________________________________
Leo J. Deveau
Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
Canada
________________________________
"Imagination is more important than
knowledge." - Albert Einstein
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