Seven Ways to Keep Your Visitors
 by: Brian Lee

These days, having a website is absolutely essential for any flourishing company. But not all sites are necessarily good ones. Your website can either be very successful and get you a large number of visitors or it can so badly made that getting a single client can be hard. Generally, a good website is one that’s descriptive, straightforward and gives people a reason to visit your page again. On the other hand, bad website is the complete opposite; they are slow to load, misleading or just simply unpleasant. The following articles will list you 7 things NOT to do for your web site if you want to have clients.

Loading time

According to recent studies, one has less then 10 seconds to captivate a visitor. If ones website has slow loading pages, it’s over; you just lost your client to one of your competitors.

Most of the time, it is because of big, slow-loading graphics (particularly if they are located in tables) that will decelerate the loading speed of your webpage. But if large images are absolutely necessary for your page’s business, simply insert smaller thumbnails of your pictures on your pages and allow guests to click on them to enlarge it (preferably in a new window). As long as it’s up to the visitor to decide upon, nobody would object to a longer loading time.

Pop-up ads

There isn’t much to say about this but to AVOID at all cost. A lot of people nowadays have pop-up blockers installed on their computer. So if your website is one that counts on pop-up windows to tell them something important, they won’t even see it. In the end, having pop-up windows is just more trouble then its worth.

Animations

Like the article announced before, one has less then 10 seconds to grab a client’s attention. With that said, guess how many people will actually hang around longer then they need to simply to view your elaborate animation?

Sideways scrolling

Make sure that your website will be displayed the way you want it on lower resolution monitors. Not everyone will have the same screen resolution as your monitor, so refrain from needing the visitor to scroll sideways.

Also, if you page displays important information too far to the right hand side, there are chances it may not even show up on other’s screen. Simply put, it’s really quite unpleasant and you will likely end up losing the guest.

Navigation

Having proper navigation is essential to any good website. Don’t attempt to be all fancy and complex with navigational features.

Just keep it straightforward and logical, it will help users keep control and enjoy surfing through your site. If the visitor keeps getting lost or if the links keep bringing him every which way then there’s a problem.

Basically, avoid complicated interactive navigation such as menus that open up to sub-menus that open up to sub-sub-menus that open up to … you get my point.

Contact information

Having a visible and easy to accessible “Contact Us” link is always helpful. If the customer can’t get in touch with your company quickly, they will most likely leave.

A good idea is to have an entire page devoted to contact material such as phone, email, fax, etc. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT have large slow-loading graphics on this page. If the contact information doesn’t load almost instantly, chances are the client will go to visit your competitor’s website.

Also, when designing the “Contact Us” form or any other form on your site, keep it as short as possible. People do not enjoy answering a long list of questions.

Non-HTML features

Like for pop-up ads, a lot of people use blocking program like firewall to keep away from those annoying things that can potentially screw up their computer.

Because of this, when visiting your page, a lot of clients may experience display and function problems as a result of your using of JavaScript, Java Applets, Cookies and so on. To be able to build a good and successful website, the use of non-html features isn’t necessary; therefore you should refrain from using them.

But if you really insist on having some, make sure it isn’t an essential component to your web site.

About The Author

Brian Lee works in the SEO department for NRJ design, a Montreal Web design company.

nrjdesign.com