Web Design Articles:
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7 things to avoid
By Michael Hall
As a freelance webpage designer I often come accross sites designed so horribly or so badly maintained that I often find myself emailing the author some quick fixes or pointing out script errors.
Number One: Colorful pages
We've all seen them, you know the florescent green, yellow or orange backgrounds. Just don't do it ... it's ugly and it overpowers the text on the screen making it difficult for those who don't click away instantly to comprehend what your site is trying to say.
Number Two: Super-Font-Man
These are pages with 3 or more drastically different font types on one page. They usually start of with Times New Roman(looks like newspaper text) and then switch to 2, 3, 4 and sometimes more different font styles. A word of advice - stick to arial or verdana at size 3 for general text and reserve Times New Roman for headlines, and please don't dare use H1 headings they appear super large.
Number Three: Black Backgrounds
Why on earth would anyone use a black background for their website? Have you ever read a book with black pages and white text? I don't think so. White text on a black background will cause eye strain and literally give you a headache.
Besides it takes much longer to load a black background because your computer screen has to paint 'paint' on many colors to get a black background. White loads the quickest and works best with black text.
Number Four: Msiplet Wrods
A scientific test recently proved that mispelt words can be read by the human brain without much problem as long as the first and last letters are in the right place.
See waht I maen?
But if you are trying to sell a product or service to a visitor bad spelling and indeed bad grammar can seriously ruin your reputation. If you can't take 3 minutes to spellcheck your salesletter chances are the product won't be of highest quality either, at least that how it is interpreted by your visitors.
Number Five: Script Errors
Ooh my favorite! Ever got a javascript error when you visited a website, it often says 'abc is not an object' or 'script error found at line 12'. Script errors are just like spelling and grammar errors but more annoying because they often will pop up an alert box with some strange error message to make sure your visitor is aware that something is wrong with your web page.
Number Six: 100 links on your home page ...
...and only 20 of them still work. The rest are broken and your visitor can't even email you and tell you that you've got 80 broken links on your home page because ...
Number Seven: No Contact Information
I can't tell you about the errors on your page or ask you a question about your product because there is no way to contact you. You have no email address, no phone number, no postal address, not even your business name ... are you even a real person? Who knows?
Strangely enough the persons that commit these design blunders online will walk into a restaurant or store and point out everything wrong with the place. Go figure.
For a free review of your website just send a blank email to design-by-mhall@getresponse.com you will receive an automated response within seconds with instructions.
"The Article Archive" http://www.bsmbahamas.com/aaweekly
"Miracles Of Words" http://www.bsmbahamas.com/miracles
"Authentic Bahamian Recipes" http://www.bsmbahamas.com/ecookbook
You can reprint this article (if not stated otherwise above) on your website or publication with notice "Reprinted from Zongoo! Computers".
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