Omaro Ailoch
Most businesses can benefit from a good, online presence. Whether a website is used as an online portfolio and contact method or a more complex customer management and shopping cart doesn't matter. What matters is that your website matches the professionalism of your organization. Many websites that fail to make the impact expected fail because they are inaccessible or simply look unprofessional. The effectiveness of a website design comes down to a lot more than colors and code.
Quick To Load
Pages and page elements must be quick to load. A surfer's attention span can be measured in seconds, and very few of them. Bearing in mind that while high speed Broadband connections have become much more popular, there are still a large number of people using 56k dialup modems. Masses of graphics and multiple streaming videos that play automatically will make a page slow to load. Poor design and coding can also cause a page to load slowly, along with an overloaded server, and excessive traffic.
Accessibility
Web site accessibility is vital and there are a number of facets that should be considered. At its core, accessibility means that the site should not be prone to regular outages. These are usually caused by unstable host servers but can be caused by poor programming and maintenance. Your site should also be accessible to people regardless of disabilities, usually overcome by providing the option to increase text size or have an audio version of your site. Check your site loads properly in all browsers, on all systems, to ensure the greatest possible level of accessibility.
Easy Navigation
Site navigation needs to be simple and easily visible. If you intend to attract visitors from the search engines then navigation menus also need to be accessible for the search engine spiders. Text links are usually best, but if you use Flash menus or images, then include a sitemap and link to it directly from your homepage. This will help people that are looking for specific information, and the search engines appreciate the effort too.
Clean and Crisp
While partially a design element, keeping your site clean and clutter free also assists visitors and helps improve your site's performance. Too much clutter distracts users' attentions away from the main point of the page. If there eye is caught by a flashing banner at the side of the page then most visitors will give up trying to read the main content and look for another site.
