5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to
make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of
thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are 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.

2) Do not use excessive 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 let your visitors feel
that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a
young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or
multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave
your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

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

5) Avoid using 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 looping on and on on your website.
If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or
muting controls would work fine.

I hope this has given you an insight of some of the biggest mistakes web designers often
make.