6 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, You should always pay extra attention to every minute detail, as you will want to make sure it performs to best serve its purpose. There are seven important rules of thumb to be aware of to make sure your website performs as well as it should.

1) Correct use of splash pages

Some designers use splash pages as the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.  A Splash page should instead be used simply as an attention getter to draw viewers to a sales page, or 'squeeze' page.

2) Do not use too many banner advertisements

Even the least 'net savvy' people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements, so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and keep banners to a minimum. this lets your visitors feel that they have 'discovered' something want to buy instead of being 'sold'

3) Have simple and clear navigation linking

You should provide a simple and very easy navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Ignore the temptation of complicated Flash based menus or many-tiered drop-down menus. If your visitors encounter a hard to navigate web page, they will leave your site.

4) Provide a clear indication of where the user is.

When a visitor is deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you must make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to find relevant information or jump to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors, because confusion generally means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using looping audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio playing over and over on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.  (this is a general rule, even though I have had moderate success with a slide show that loops over and over.  Just make sure it is only on ONE page, and not on ALL of the pages on your site.)

6) Use Bonuses Generously!

Using 'freebies', or bonuses is a good way to keep visitors coming back, and also a good way to build trust and credibility.  At the very least you should have an auto-responder based newsletter they can sign up for.

Apply these tips consistently , and you will begin to see a marked difference in the response to your site!