Understanding the opposites

There are two ways in which one can learn from others. One is by seeing and understanding what they are doing that works and the other is seeing and understanding what they are doing that does NOT work.

In this article I am going to talk about the top website distracters that people have used very ‘unsuccessfully’.

The latest is not necessarily the best

The excitement that you have while launching your first website is very much understandable. It’s almost like giving birth to a baby. You want all the best things in the life for the ‘little one’. In this excitement one tends to overdo it especially from a technology point of view.

Choosing the latest technology or the new tool might not be a good idea when it comes to websites. Remember that your goal and objective is to put up a website that can complement your business goals. It is not to learn how a new technology works or how it will be received.

It is very sensible to go with a mature technology and approach that has been proven and at the same time not yet outdated. Check if there are enough resources available on the market who can work on that technology to reduce the risks.

Being loud does not make you more convincing

Actually, being too loud only puts off people. Make sure that your website appears reasonably well appointed without have too much of ‘make up’. Most importantly allow the users to view and digest the home page at their own pace.

If your home page has a lot of flashing text then it tends to distract the user. Not only that some people are actually put off by large flashing animation and they might simply go away from your website and you will lose business.

If you wish to draw attention to a regular visitor about a sale or a new product a simple flashing animation might do the trick. The key to success here is about the right use after careful thinking and application of mind.

Attract the search engines as well

Avoid anything that the search engine does not like. Always remember that the search engines like HTML the best! Search engines often ignore items that it cannot index. Flash is a classic case.

I do not have anything against Flash personally but the technology does not allow a search engine to index full flash pages. The hyperlinks inside Flash files are inaccessible to the search engines and hence you might miss out on this.

These are some of the few important aspects to remember when you are designing your first website.

You do not have to completely disregard Flash through. You can use it in moderation to show how some aspect of your product works or a slideshow of various models that you may have and such other things. The point I am making here is that use it only when you need it.

Frames look good only on family pictures

Frames are a technology that allows you to show different web pages at the same time in a screen. This can be useful in some cases where you have a list of items on the left page and you wish to show different pages on the right side when a user clicks on any item on the left index page.

It was a popular method of website design a few years back but it is not recommended any more. Search engines gets confused about such frame based web pages. Even a lot of browsers have stopped support for frame based web pages. So it is a good idea to restrict the use of Frames only for your family pictures!