An entry page acts as a barrier to visitors. Search engines hate them, and you will loose 25% of your visitors if you have an entry page.
Entry Page: An entry page acts as a barrier to visitors. Search engines hate them, and you will loose 25% of your visitors if you have an entry page.
This website page is artsy but unreadable. It has light grey text on a white background. What is the point of making your web page hard to read?
Unreadable: This website page is artsy but unreadable. It has light grey text on a white background. What is the point of making your web page hard to read?
The home page of this website has nothing but buttons. There is nothing to read and nothing to capture the visitor\'s interest. This is an example of very bad website navigation.
Bad Navigation: The home page of this website has nothing but buttons. There is nothing to read and nothing to capture the visitor\'s interest. This is an example of very bad website navigation.
There is a huge block of text in the center of this page with no paragraphs. Every page uses different colors, and if you click on a picture you get a copyright warning.
Complete Mess: There is a huge block of text in the center of this page with no paragraphs. Every page uses different colors, and if you click on a picture you get a copyright warning.


Web Design, Redesign and Upgrades

If your small business uses a web design more than three years old, it may be a good candidate for a website design evaluation and upgrade. A useful article on this topic may be found here.

Web Site Design Tips

Examples of Good Web Design

The #1 thing you want to do with your website is make it easy to use and ensure that the visitor has a good experience. Here are some characteristics of a good website:
  • Simple, Easy-to-Use Navigation - Your web design should have a menu or navigation bar that makes it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. Standardize it on every page. Do not use an image map for navigation.
  • Fast Page Download Times - Google is the most popular search engine, in part, because it has a simple, uncluttered, and quick-loading search page. If your web design is cluttered with oversized pictures, animation, or (please don't do this) self-loading audio, visitors will click away from your page out of impatience.
  • Site Consistency - Every page on your site should reflect a consistent web design theme. If some pages have different backgrounds, graphics and text sizes, it will look disorderly to the visitor. If your website has a poor graphic design or disorderly appearance, they will go somewhere else.
  • Optimized for Search Engines - This is the single most important thing you can do to improve your website design. See our Search Engine Optimization page.

Examples of Bad Web Design

You may be loosing customers because your web design looks amateurish and unprofessional. Here are some questions you should ask yourself:
  • Entry Page - Does your small business web design use an "Entry Page" containing little more than a picture and an "Enter Here" button? This is the #1 killer of visitors to your website. Ask yourself: If you had a store front with nothing displayed in the window, and put up a gate with a "Press to Enter" button, would you get many visitors? Of course not! Bad Idea!
  • Unreadable Text - Does the graphic design of your website use "artsy" combinations of text and background color that make the text hard to read? (Why on Earth would you want your text to be hard to read?)
  • Poor Formatting - Does your text stretch all the way across the page, or include underlined words that are not links?
  • Broken Links - Does your site have broken links that lead to error pages? (People and search engines view these as an indication of a low quality, un-maintained website.)
  • Unwanted Animations - Does your web design use distracting and unprofessional animations that blink, dance, prance, dance and are otherwise distracting? You may think they're cute, but visitors find them annoying and unprofessional.
If you answered any of these questions with a "Yes", then your web design should be revised.

Web Design Upgrades

There are many ways a web design can be upgraded, such as
  • Enforce a consistent style across all web pages on your site by using style sheets.
  • Optimize it for search engines
  • Add features, such as
    • a blog
    • improved navigation bars or menus
    • slide shows
    • video
    • contact us forms
If your small business website is due for a revamp contact us for a free no obligation consultation.
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