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Five Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website extra attention should be paid to every little detail to make sure it performs well and serves its purpose. Here are five very important rules of thumb to observe to make sure that your website performs well.

1. Do Not Use Splash Pages!

What is a splash page? Splash pages are the very first page that you see when you land on a website. A splash page usually has a very beautiful image with words like "Welcome" or "Click Here To Enter". I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, splash pages are just that--a pretty page that offers no real value or purpose. Do not give your visitors any reason to hit the "back" button on their browsers! Instead, give your visitors the value of your website upfront without the splash page.

2. Do Not Use Too Many Banner Advertisements.

Oh yes, even the least Internet savvy people among us have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting your website real estate. Provide more valuable content and weave your affiliate links into that content, and let your visitors feel like they want to buy instead of being forced to buy.

3. Have Simple and Clear Navigation.

You have to provide simple and very straightforward navigation menus, so simple that even a young child or a caveman will know how to use it. Stay away from those complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop-down menus. If your visitors do not know how to navigate your website, they will leave your website.

4. Indicate Where Your User Is On Your Site

When a visitor is deeply engrossed in browsing your website, you will want to make sure that they know which part of your site that they are on at that moment. This way, your visitor will be able to browse the information they want or navigate themselves to a different section of your site easily. Pleas do not confuse your visitors, because confusion spells "Abandon Ship"!

5. Avoid Using Audio.

If your visitor is going to stay awhile, reading your content, make sure that you do not annoy them by adding some audio looping on and in your website. We've all been to those sites where that's all you hear (Didn't you hit the back button really quick?). If you do insist on using audio on your website, make sure your visitors have some control over it--volume and muting controls are perfect.