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DON’TS:

DON’T: Cover your website in useless advertisements

People are coming to your website to see your content, not the content of advertisers. You are better off making it easy for potential customers to read all the important details of your business. Sell YOUR products and services, not the products and services of advertisers. While a simple banner or two won’t hurt, animated advertisements or pop-ups are detrimental to user experiences. Advertisements completely throw off your website’s appearance. A lot of advertisements can also lead to malware-infested websites and cause other problems for your customers.

DON’T: Write endless amounts of text

People want information about your company and what you do. They don’t want the entire history and details of everything that has ever happened. Readers want the most important information laid out for them in an easy-to-read manner. In most cases, you are perfectly fine having an informative header and following up with a short supportive paragraph. If you decide to structure your information like that, it is best to divide each piece into “boxes”. That means you should contain the information in a “box” (whether visible or invisible). This keeps everything organized and easy for readers to move from one topic to the next. If you really do need to write long paragraphs, it is best to place it on the website’s blog or newsletter. Readers expect longer pieces of writing in the blog section of a website.

DON’T: Overuse keywords and phrases

The old tactic of stuffing your website with related keywords simply doesn’t work anymore. Over the years Google (and other search engines) have been rapidly improving their search algorithms. There are many more requirements to rank up your website in search results compared to a few years ago. In fact, filling your website with lots of keywords and phrases can actually DECREASE your page ranking. You need to provide clean, valuable content for readers. Google has released a starter guide explaining how they rank websites, along with steps to take to improve your ranking.

DON’T: Stray from your color scheme or overall design

It is important to keep a consistent website structure and color scheme for to represent your brand. Don’t start changing the colors of fonts or backgrounds if it goes against how your brand looks and feels. If your website is green-themed, it is a bad idea to start changing things to red or pink. There is also usually a website structure you need to follow. For example, if all your headers are Arial 25pt you shouldn’t start making other headers Times New Roman 20pt. Not only will it look ugly, it will confuse your readers. If you really want to change colors, font sizes, and other page structures, you may need to completely redesign your website.

In conclusion, web development and design is tough to get right. It is a necessary task to maintain brand reputation and conversion rates. The most important concept is to think like your potential customers. If you are to view your website for the first time without bias, what do you see? Where do your eyes first flick to? Where do your eyes look next? Do you see the information you want to see as a “first time customer”? Are you able to access the pages you want without a hassle? How are the load times? Are you having a hard time scanning the page for key points? Do the sign up forms function as intended? The list goes on and on. By having the mindset of a first-time viewer, you will be able to develop an incredible website that fits the needs of customers-to-be.

Feel free to contact us for more website design and development information. We are more than happy to help you!