Previous Articles
10 Easy Ways to Raise your Search Engine Ranking (Without Raising your Expenses)
Six Finishing Touches that Will Make Your Website Look Professional
Glossary of Common Internet Terms
Eight Danger Spots for Beginning Web Designers and How to Avoid Them
Six Finishing Touches that will Make Your Website Look Professional
So you've managed to lure potential clients to your website but you're not making any sales. In fact, looking at your web statistics, it seems that most of your visitors are leaving your site before even exploring your secondary pages. What's wrong?
Even the best search engine rankings will do you little good if your visitors are scared off by the home page. If your site doesn't project and aura of professionalism, they're gone in thirty seconds.
So what can you do? Here are a list of 6 small tips that can make your website look like you paid big bucks.
Add a favicon.ico file. Most browsers now automatically look for the favicon.ico file when bookmarking a site and many browsers seek it out the moment your site loads. If you are in doubt, check your error log and see how many computers have requested it.
Use original graphics. If they've seen it on someone else's site, or on an invitation for a kids birthday party, it should not be on your website. With the many fine graphic programs on the market today, it should be little trouble to come up with original graphics for your site. Visit our graphic design page to see samples.
Avoid space-filling gadgets. Unless your business sells web counters or is running a sweepstakes, take the counter off the page. No one needs to know that they are the 427th visitor. It distracts the eye and adds unneccessary code. (Exception: If you are running an online auction site or related business, the web counter can be handy to show all parties the level of interest in an item.)
Avoid long load times. Cable modems and DSL are great, but not everyone has them. Steer clear of long flash videos and make sure that your image files match the size they are being displayed. Why make your computer load a 1000 x 800 pixel photo when it's only displayed in the website as 250 x 200?
Stay on target. Don't have links to your grandson's baby pictures unless it is an issue that might directly relate to your customers. Keep your focus clear and your site clean. Save the baby pictures for a personal homepage.
Preview your text in a word processor. Unless you have a web design software with an automatic spell checker, type your text into a word processing program first. It can catch those few little spelling errors that bring down the professionalism of a whole site.