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Australian Website guides
Some important facts for Australian business owners. Domain Names. Purchasing a .com.au requires an ABN. A standard price for a .com.au is about $100AUD Try to buy a domain that has your main product/keywords in it. For example abc.com.au tells...
Creating Your First Web Site, Part 2
Creating Your First Web Site, Part 2 By Lisa Maliga © 2005 In Part 1 you learned some tips about the basics of starting your site and finding a home for it, now comes the time to properly name it and get it optimized for the search engines so that...
Does your web design company own you? by www.vipwh.com
This is a growing concern amongst many business owners. Does your web design company own you? This may be possible if you've allowed them to host your web site for you and also register your domain name for your company.
Web design companies...
Small Business Website Design - How to Get Professional Results on a Shoestring Budget
Just because you are a small business with an even smaller website design budget, does not mean that you cannot have a professional looking website and presence on the web. All it means is you will have to do some of the work yourself instead of...
Web Designer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the buzz word you will see everywhere in the internet nowsadays. Designing a website today is no longer about aesthetics. It must not only look good, it must be visible to the search engines as well. What...
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Inconsistent Design
One problem I often see on websites is inconsistent design. This not only looks unprofessional, but it also makes a site difficult for visitors to use. I recently visited a site, and each page was so different from every other page that I thought I was being sent to different websites. I found it so disconcerting that I left the site after going to three pages and have no plans to go back. Do you think I would every buy a product or service from this kind of site? Not likely.
You want to make your site have a consistent design. By this I mean that all the links and contact information should be in the same place on every page. Each page should have the same design and colors too. A minor change in color isn't really a problem, but be sure that it's necessary. A change in color or layout should have a definite purpose and not be done just because you feel like it or want to show people what a great website designer you are.
Here are a few design tips to remember when creating a website.
Don't use blinking text. Everyone hates it because it's so darned annoying.
Don't use more than 3 font styles on a site. Ideally, you should use only one font for the entire website. You can use a fancy font for your site title, but be sure to make it into a graphic, such as a JPEG file. If you use a fancy font, it must be on the viewer's computer or it will be replaced by the viewer's default font.
Keep italic and bold to a minimum. Use bold to highlight something important on a page, but if you use it too often people will ignore it. Most people find italicized letters hard
to read, so if you must use italic, do so sparingly.
Don't underline anything that isn't a link. It's understood that underlined words on a website are links. So if you have something underlined that's not a link, when someone tries to click on the word and nothing happens, they will be upset. You don't want visitors to be upset. This happened to me a couple or weeks ago. I felt that if the person didn't know this basic rule, I wouldn't trust him enough to buy anything from him.
Use a font that's easy to read, like Arial. Virtually every computer, both PC and Mac, has Arial on the system. So when you design a site using Arial, you know that viewers will see it the same way you designed it. Arial is easy to read because it's a Sans Serif font. That means that it doesn't have "feet," the little lines at the top and bottom of the letters.
Don't use a background that's either too busy or a similar color to your font. This will make the text very difficult to read, and visitors will leave quickly. I've seen a black font on a midnight blue background, and a white font on a pale yellow background. They were both so hard to read that I left in less than a minute.
Creating a website that's easy to use and pleasing to the eye will be a pleasant experience to visitors. This will keep these visitors on your site longer and increase the chance that they will buy something from you.
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