Web Design: 10 Tips for Better Web Site Usability

10 Tips for Better Web Site Usability - and Profits!

Written by Marty Foley

Continued from page 1

5) Visitors typically scan web pages, rather than read them word for word. Keeping this in mind, use descriptive headlines and subheads, write concisely, and make important points stand out by highlighting them or using different colored text.

6) Certain bright colors such as red and yellow cause more strain on repparttar human eye than others. Use such colors sparingly on your site if you want to encourage visitors to stay on your site longer. Otherwise, eye strain may cause them to leave prematurely.

7) Since visitors typically scan web pages, hyperlinks within repparttar 134732 text of a web page should be relatively short (consisting of few words), yet very descriptive of where they lead to.

8) Two reasons to use repparttar 134733 ALT attribute in repparttar 134734 HTML code of your web pages: A) It can be used to slightly improve search engine ranking. B) It can tell repparttar 134735 visually impaired (or those who surf with graphics turned of in their browsers) what repparttar 134736 image is.

9) How many clicks does it take to get to your online order form? Many webmasters have found that repparttar 134737 fewer clicks required, repparttar 134738 better. In other words, repparttar 134739 easier you make it to buy from you, repparttar 134740 more likely people will.

10) Beware of common problems with using frames on a web site: A) A large percentage of surfers dislike them. B) They can be confusing and awkward for users. C) It's tricky to get repparttar 134741 HTML just right. D) Search engines have problems indexing past repparttar 134742 home page.

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"Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 6 (Final in series)

Written by Lynne Schlumpf

Continued from page 1
from these. Make sure you have clear instructions at repparttar

bottom of each newsletter ezine that lets them unsubscribe if they want to. There's nothing worse than someone being subscribed to your newsletter long after they want to be. They tend to get VERY angry! Listbot automatically puts this information at repparttar 134731

bottom of every newsletter you mail. One of my most successful ezines was a jokelist. (If you also decide to do a jokelist, make sure you have a disclaimer about it being possibly offensive and only intended for those over 18 years of age) I usually had 4 or 5 good jokes in it, with a few sales mentions at repparttar 134732

top of each issue. The sales mentions were not hard sell. They merely mentioned that my online store had a new item or was having a sale. I rarely had anyone unsubscribe from this newsletter. Another really successful one was a recipe newsletter. People love recipes. Try to think of a newsletter you could write that you could be really creative and interesting with. If you're an expert at something (most everyone is an expert at one thing, at least!), create a newsletter that targets people who are interested in that one thing. Keeping in mind who your target subscribers are and what they are interested in helps keep repparttar 134733

newsletter on track. 13. Has clear navigation: I get repparttar 134734

giggles everytime I think of this subject because of repparttar 134735

way it was handled on one of my favorite websites. I'll get to that in a minute, but let me just mention a few things about navigation. Just take a look at some of your favorite websites to get an idea of how simple they make their navigation links. If they're into some depth in your site and want to know what page they're on, put page number links in a corner somewhere. Put simple boxes across repparttar 134736

top or down repparttar 134737

side with links that tell them how to get back home. Plan your website on paper first if you like, kind of like a logic flowchart. You can use Microsoft Frontpage 2000's navigation and hyperlinks icons to do this also. Then test, test, and more test. Have others go to your website and tell you if it's confusing. Now, I will let one of my favorite sites explain repparttar 134738

concept of what they call "Mystery Meat Navigation" to you. You'll come out laughing, but you'll remember repparttar 134739

lesson well. Go here to check out their discussion of this topic: http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/badnavigation.html Well, that’s repparttar 134740

end of this series, and I thank you all, from repparttar 134741

bottom of my heart for joining me. I wish you great success and fun besides!

Lynne Schlumpf is the CEO of Route 66 Cyber Cafe, Inc., http://www.r66cci.com, a Web hosting and design company specializing in promoting websites for new owners, building affordable e-commerce sites, and providing reliable web hosting solutions as an affiliate of Virtualis Incorporated.

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