Things NOT To Do On Your Site.

No matter what kind of site you are planning on having, try to avoid these rookie mistakes.

1. Don't have a Flash animated intro video.

These chew bandwidth, turn off users, and make your site look dated. Splash pages were an early sin of abusive Web design. Flash intros delay users' ability to get what they came for-the information contained on your site. On the upside, most of them feature a "skip intro" button. Fortunately, splash screens and Flash intros are almost extinct. They are so bad that even the most clueless Web designers won't recommend them, (including us!), even though a few (even more clueless) clients continue to request them.

Remember- most people equate animated content with useless content.

2. Legibility problems.

Bad font, (small font size and lack of contrast between text and background), is probably the biggest problem people have on the net. No matter how great your product or service, if people have to work hard to read your site, they will tend to leave and not come back.

So, why is so much website text so hard to read in the first place? Two theories:

• Most web designers are young, and so have perfect vision. Tiny text doesn't bother them as much as it bothers people on the other side of 40. Designers also tend to own expensive, high-quality monitors that are easier on the eyes.
• While creating a website, designers don't actually read the information on the pages. They simply glance at the text to make sure it looks great. In fact, many designs are approved with "lorem ipsum" standing in the place of real copy. When you don't have to read the words, it doesn't matter that the characters are small.

So remember, dark text on a light background, and good font size, will make your site a lot easier to read.

3. Avoid spelling mistakes.

In this era of spell check, there's no excuse for this. Just try to avoid Americanisms, like 'ize' word endings, 'airplane' and 'color'.

4. Make sure you have a well written 'About Us' page on your site, and Contact info on every page.

And even though phone numbers and email addresses are the most requested forms of contact info, having a physical mailing address on the site might be more important because it's one of the key credibility markers. A company with no address is not one you want to give money to. It's also a good idea to have a Contacts link on every page. Make it easy for your potential customers to reach you.

5. Write for the web.

People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites, it was found that 79 percent of test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

As a result, Web pages have to employ scannable text, using

• highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
• meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)
• bulleted lists
• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

So basically, make your content

• short,
• scannable, and
• to the point (rather than full of fluffy marketese).

Web content should also

• answer users' questions and
• use common language rather than made-up terms (this also improves search engine visibility, since users search using their own words, not yours).