5 Important Rules in Website Design

 Your website is the first of the internet marketing tools in your kit. Here are some things to remember.

When it comes to your website, absolute care should be paid to every tiny detail to make sure it performs to serve its purpose. Here are five crucial rules of thumb to follow to make sure your website marketing is superlative.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first page 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 — beautiful 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 immediately without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least internet smart people have learned to dismiss banner advertisements so you are wasting valuable website marketing real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content.

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 fancy Flash based or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear location menu of where the user is

When visitors are deeply absorbed 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 data or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors.

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, browsing your content, you will want to know they’re not pestered by some audio looping on and on at your website. I would not include audio in my sites except perhaps a game or music site.  If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it.