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| Holidays | 2006 |
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| Website Do’s and Don’ts |
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Many of us shudder at the site of bright, flashing, animated gifs or 10-minute Flash intros with no “skip intro” link. Yet, sites like these still flood the cyberspace arena. For those of you developing a new website or updating an existing one, consider these do’s and don’ts to motivate your visitors to stay on your site instead of running to the competition.
Do’s
1. Offer valuable content in bite-size pieces.
2. Provide a well-organized site with easy navigation that includes a “home” and “contact” link on every page.
3. Less is more – The fewer clicks a visitor has to make to find the information they need, the more likely they are to stay on your site.
4. Include testimonials.
5. Use easily readable colors, fonts and font sizes.
6. Always test your site for bugs.
7. Update your site information frequently.
8. Make sure your site design correlates with your other company collateral to reinforce your brand.
9. Make your site compatible across browsers. Although Internet Explorer is still the most widely used, making up 60.8% of the browser usage in October 2006 according to W3Schools, Firefox is gaining popularity and currently accounts for 28.8%. The laggards are Mozilla, Netscape and Opera.
10. Follow the standards set by the W3C web consortium.
Don’ts
1. Don’t use bright, flashing animated gifs or other images
2. Refrain from using a great deal of Flash content. Not everyone has the Flash plug-in to view it, it can be brutally slow for those on dial-up, and Flash sites are still tough to spider for search engines. If you’re including a Flash intro, be sure to provide a “Skip intro” link. If you’re developing a full Flash site, offer an HTML version as an alternative for visitors.
3. Don’t use pop-ups on every page. Most browsers now come with a popup blocker, but for those who don’t have it yet, if you must use them, keep them to a minimum.
4. Don’t fill your pages with ads.
5. Don’t include large graphic files and images on your pages. Be sure to optimize all images to insure your pages load quickly. Visitors won’t wait long for a page to load before deciding to move on to another site. If your page takes longer than 10 seconds to load, consider reducing images or breaking up the content into smaller pages. Keep in mind that there are millions of people still on dial-up connections.
6. Make sure your website doesn’t scroll from left to right. The majority of users have their monitor resolutions set to 1024x768, but there’s still a viable percentage with 800x600 resolution. This explains why less than 10% of websites are wider than 800 pixels, according to Web Design Practices. And nearly half are 751-800 pixels wide, the best range to prevent scrolling from left to right on any size monitor.
7. Don’t break search engine or spamming rules
For additional information on websites, be sure to read Planning Your Company Website and Promoting Your Website.
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About The Brookfield Group
The Brookfield Group has become a leader in IT, ISP, ASP and web solutions by providing next level technology solutions managed by experts who give you peace of mind without the tech-talk. The company's services are customized to fit any enterprise-size businesses and include: IT project management; hosting solutions and maintenance; systems security and patches; telecommunications services, server and desktop setup, repair and applications; network infrastructure design; audio visual products; surveillance and security solutions; as well as a variety of other software, hardware, services and accessories. Located in Carmel, Indiana, more information about The Brookfield Group products and services is available at www.thebrookfieldgroup.com or by calling 317.524.6000.
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