Thursday, June 18, 2009

Why is website design so important for small businesses?

By Kevin Mcdonald

If you're thinking of starting a business, you'll definitely want to establish some kind of web presence. Here we'll give you a few simple tips that will make designing your Web site a lot easier.

We've all been annoyed by those flashing banners and highly animated web pages at some point. A lot of people click off of them right away. However, if you offer banner ad creation services, or if you create animations for others, you may want to put up a select few so prospective customers can see your wares.

Your site needs to be able to be navigated by most people. If a person clicks on your site, and they can't find their way around, or find out how to make a purchase from you, they will probably get annoyed and leave the site entirely. You just lost a customer! In general, you should put your navigation buttons on the left side of the page because that's how most people read- from the left to the right.

When someone views your page, make it easier for them to get to different parts of the site, or back to the beginning. They should also know exactly where they are on the site. Put an easy-to-find link on every page that sends your visitors back to the home page, or you can also provide Web links to relevant information.

When you design your site, look at how long it takes to load. Reduce the loading time by limiting the amount of graphics per page. Long loading times are annoying to most people- they want their information NOW!!

Pick a font that is easy to read. This is especially vital if your site markets to older people. Every web browser will display fonts a little bit differently, so you wnat to choose one that is compatible with the majority of web browsers.

Different web browsers display fonts in different ways. Use a font that's compatible with the most popular web browsers. It would be a shame to pick a nice fancy font, and have it not work with Firefox or Internet Explorer.

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