Townsville computer repairs nerds have been developing and building websites behind the scenes for businesses, organisations, personal and professional for customers in Townsville and all over the world since the mid 1990’s.
We have seen all the fads come and go, all the jargon and all the latest, lost and forgotten crazes.
Even now customers come up to us all the time and ask for something which is going to cost a lot of money because they saw it on another website and later on thanked me for putting them on the correct path.
There are always new features and technologies which should be embraced. And there are also an abundance of tried and tested techniques and standards which worked int he past and still work now. After all, whats the point of having a great website if no one sees it?
As many of our customers like to build their own websites, or further develop and maintain the ones we have already developed for them, we thought we should make a post about the do’s and don’ts of building and having a website for yourself or your business.
Speed Matters
People are impatient, specially on the information super highway. You have about 3 seconds for your website to load and if not, they are gone as fast as they arrived – or slow depending on your websites speed.
There are 2 major factors which will contribute to the speed of your website.
The first one is the hosting. Your website is stored on a web host on the internet. This is a company with fast servers and fast internet connections.
Every website is stored on a web server. If that web server has too much traffic, is too slow or too many websites on it, your website will load very slow and your customers will have disappeared.
The second factor is the website itself.
Is there too much data and transfer needed on the landing page. Are the requirements too vast and complicated for the web browser to render. Do you have large images taking too long to load and halting things up?
If you answered yes to any of these questions your website is too slow to load.
Also, if you are intent on keeping things the way they are, you can also implement other parallel strategies like telling your website to load text first, so the viewer has something to read while they are waiting for the website to render.
Ditch the Sound Introductions
Sound on a web site when never asked for is the worst.
There is nothing worse waiting for a web site to load up then all of the sudden not knowing there is sound about to burst out when your speakers are turned all the way up, or it just surprises you.
I can think of any reason to have it at all, unless its some kind of multimedia presentation and even then you should warn your customers with a play and pause button.
It slows down the load time, it scared the life out of you and its just ugly on the ears. Don’t do it. Just don’t!
Ditch the Flash Introductions
Pre-loaders on your website look and should just be that. – But not the whole website.
Try and get to the relevant information as fast as possible. I know it looks cool, but other than taking a long time to load, can also irritate your customers who just want to get to the information they want – not watch your advertisement.
Also, a lot of introductory animations require plugins for your web browser to display. If the viewers browser doesn’t have them the website might not work or throttle right down.
They have their place and they should be streamed, not loaded. But i rarely use them, its just not worth loosing your customers.
Keep Important Information Above the Fold
Its tempting to want to put your information and details all over the website and spread it all out over the place so it looks like you have lots of content.
But its even more important to put the vital information your trying to display right in the eye of the viewer. That means on the first page on the first screen – so they basically do not have to scroll down.
Like a newspaper has the headline story at the top, with limited time and limited patience you want your web viewer to see it straight away when the websites loads up – or before the site has completely loaded up!
Three Colour Basics
Too many colors mean to many distractions. Unless its for a kids website with games and lots of colours i try and keep all themes for a website to three main colours.
A background colour, a opposite complimenting foreground colour and a link color for the main headings and then the rest of the text in black.
If you want to add more colours its best to try and compliment with images and pictures of different colours which work well with your three base colours.
Any more and it starts looking like a pizza and not only will it hurt your customers eyes, but it will also be harder for them to find the information they are searching for and the links they want to click on.
Where is Your Call to Action
We are taught as children to learn to read from left to right yeah? So it makes sense to put your CTR (call to action) like buy now, or click here, or telephone number on the left as well.
But on the internet it is different.
There are programs you can add to your website to look where people move their mouse to the most. And most of these heat maps will show most people on the internet and on your website will look to your top right hand corner. Completely different from a book in real life.
So, its best to always put your call to action, or phone number somewhere at the top right hand corner or in big letters in the middle like this website.
I want people to pick up the phone. I want people to call me. So Townsville Nerds put their phone number in big letters, right in to the middle at the top of our website. If the customers computer screen is small it will move to the right.
