Maxx Marketing News

Web Sites That Work Part 2

Sept 01/05 - Don’t get Fiddly. Website technology allows designers the freedom to utilize a wide variety of different design and layout options. However, it is easy to get carried away.

Generally a simple website is best. Try to avoid to many tables, frames, columns or fiddly navigation and booking systems.

While images are very important, remember screen size, browser setups, and connection speeds vary. Especially if your clients are outside North America. A clean, simple site is more likely to download quickly and display correctly. When using images, make sure they are optimized for the web.

Think of text as a picture. Big chunks of text on a website are scary! On the web, words are viewed as a picture. A paragraph that looks quite normal on paper can change shape alarmingly when viewed on a computer. Users are likely to skim-read the inline text, their initial behavior is to look, not read. To make text attractive to the skim reader, extreme editing is often required.

Don’t use your site as an archive unless you have an archive section set up for future reference. Old content makes your site look old. Remove outdated information quickly and on a regular basis. Make sure you update the basics like location, phone, fax and email addresses and most importantly any prices. Make sure your website is a living thing and include a date, on the Home Page, so users can see how up to date your site is.

And finally, make sure you get other people to check how user-friendly your site is before launching it on to the World Wide Web

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