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Making your website work
Just over 70% of UK households had internet access in 2009, and there are more UK adults who’ve bought something online than have not. The same applies to using the internet for work – we’re all becoming very internet-savvy. People know what they are doing, they know their way around.
As we’ve recently updated our own website, we’ve got best practice hints and tips on the brain. So there are some things that we know from experience, that people simply don’t like when visiting websites.
Here are our top ten pitfalls to avoid:
1. Help, I’m lost. Do your visitors know their way home? At the very least have a link to the home page, or to a site map, on every page. A search feature is also helpful for larger sites. If someone’s lost, the chances are they will leave. They may never come back.
2. Why’s my Back button not working. You won’t get on your visitors’ good sides by disabling their browser back and forward buttons with page redirection scripts. More likely they’ll click the ‘x’ in the top right hand corner.
3. What does that say? Reading on a computer screen is more strenuous on the eyes than reading print. So if you have a light background, use dark text, or vice versa. If they can’t read your site, guess what they’ll do next.
4. What’s that spinning, flashing, blinking, object? The soooo cool creative graphics seemed like a good idea at the time. But stop, take a deep breath and think about it. What will it add to your site? Will it cause your visitors to lose focus, will it slow down page load time? The average visitor will wait barely three seconds for a page to completely download.
5. I’ve seen all this before. If your content isn’t updated regularly, your visitors will lose interest. Try to update your site at least once a month – weekly is even better. If you don’t have a lot of time to spare, you could add a blog or forum and allow your visitors to add content for you. In addition, if you don’t update your site regularly, having a ’site last updated’ date will only show how out of touch you are. And what impression do you send out with an ad for an event that’s already happened.
6. Where are the links? Make sure your links are clearly marked. Underlines, colour, anything that’s different from your site’s normal text. If it’s not a link – don’t underline it. Make sure all your links lead somewhere other than ‘HTTP 404 – page not found’. What does that say about you?
7. Enter site? Why else did I come here? If you have a gate-keeper, you’re wasting bandwidth. If it’s a flash intro, that’s a step up – but most visitors click the ’skip intro’ link before it even finishes loading.
8. They can’t even smell. I mean spell. Don’t let your hard earned money go to waste, use the ’spelling and grammar’ option to at least alert you to possible typos. Proof reading your final product is also helpful. No one is infallible. That’s why pencils have rubbers and computer programs have an Undo Typing function.
9. Hit the volume button quick. If you are brave or foolish enough to play music or other strange noises to people who haven’t requested them, make absolutely sure you have a clearly marked ’sound off’ or ’sound mute’ button.
10. What shall I search for? To enhance Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) performance (that is, attract more visitors from searches), make sure your website content includes all the most likely search variations that someone would use looking for the service you provide. Importantly, that may not be how you might describe your service, but how a potential customer would.