Articles
Newsletter
Domain Name Search
Links
Site Map

Please don't hesitate to ask questions or request a free estimate for your web design project.

Bookmark this page by pressing Control-D.

Top 10 reasons to redesign your website.

Here's a list of ten common website problems. If your site does any of these things, you might want to consider getting it a touch-up, if not a facelift.

1. The site doesn't ask viewers to do something.

If you're selling a product, you need to ask your viewers to click a link to buy the product. If you're selling a service, you need to ask your viewers to submit a form and contact you to get a free quote (or whatever). If your site is a free information resource, you need to ask your viewers to create an account in order to access the information.

And you need to spell it out for your viewers.

This doesn't mean that your site's content should consist entirely of one link that says "Click here to buy now". However, that link should be on your site somewhere, and the rest of the site should lead to it.

And sometimes it helps to have that link on more than one page of your site.

2. The navigation links are confusingly named.

Your navigation links should be short, descriptive, and specific. Not long, poetic, and vague.

For example, if you have a page that contains your contact information, the navigation link to it should say either "Contact", "Contact Us", or "Contact Info". It shouldn't say "My Information" (which is vague), or "Concerning an Address" (which is long and vague), or "Reach Out" (which sounds nice but is vague).

Sometimes space or visual design considerations will force you to use less-than-optimal navigation link names. Just do your best to work with what you have.

Body text links can be longer than navigation links. Sometimes a whole sentence is a more effective body text link than a single word would be.

3. The information on the site is obviously dated.

If you go to a website that's still promoting a series of events that happened last year, how much will you trust the rest of the information on the site?

Obviously, it's time for a change. You can either make the change yourself if you know HTML, or hire a web designer.

You can also get and learn some software such as Nvu (free) or Contribute ($149) that allows you to easily make website changes without having to know HTML.

You can have a web developer create a "content publishing system" and integrate it with your site. This is the most expensive solution, costing several hundreds of dollars, but it's also the most customizable and easy to use. And you can use it from any computer--not just your own.

Some people also use "blogs" (web logs, a kind of mass-produced content publishing system) to keep their events listings up to date.

DIY RESOURCES (links pop up):

  • Nvu ... a free tool for making changes to your website yourself.
  • Mambo ... the best free content management system (CMS).
  • Blogger and Movabletype ... two blogging tools.

4. The pictures on the site aren't "optimized."

You shouldn't just take your unadulterated digital camera or scanned pictures and post them online.

You should first crop them, resize them smaller, color and level-balance them, and then optimize them for small file size.

If your site is full of huge pictures that take forever to download and look bad once they do, forget about viewers sticking around or forming a great opinion of your offerings.

DIY RESOURCES (links pop up):

  • Irfanview ... a free image viewer that you can use to crop, resize, color and level balance your digital camera pictures and scans. (Windows)
  • Photo Crunch ... costs $8 and allows you to optimize (compress) your JPEG (or JPG) images for fastest possible download speed. Very easy to use. (Windows)

5. The body text is too dense.

Reading text on a computer screen is harder on the eyes than reading from a piece of paper. The font shouldn't be too small or too large, and the typeface should be one that's easy to read on a screen.

For maximum readability, blocks of body text should be 12 to 15 words long, and 3 to 5 lines long.

What you're reading right now is set in sans-serif, which is a very common body text choice. "Style sheets" were also used so that the line-spacing is set a little higher than usual. The font size is based on your standard browser font size.

Break up sections of text with headers. Headers are good because they allow people who "scan" web pages to quickly find what they're looking for. They're also great for search engine optimization of your key phrases. Headers should be in a different type style than your body text so it sticks out.

Consider bold-facing the most important sentence(s) in each section of body text. This greatly helps people who scan web pages rather than read them.

DIY RESOURCE (link pops up):

  • CSS Reference ... lots of tutorials and reference materials on using Cascading Style Sheets to format your text. Of particular interest are the pages on "CSS Text" and "CSS Font".

6. The site is hosted on Geocities or another free service.

There's nothing wrong with free hosting if your website is of a personal nature, but if your site is for your business, you need full-service (paid) hosting. Free hosting generally puts other businesses' ad banners on top of your site, and is slow.

Avoid it. Here's some great hosting.

7. The site is down or can't be found.

If your site can't be found by anyone, what good's it doing you? If the problem is that your site is constantly down, consider a new hosting service.

If the problem isn't of a technical nature, then website marketing including search engine optimization and directory submissions can do wonders. So can links to your site from other sites. And don't forget classifieds, postcards, and email (but don't be a spammer).

8. There are navigation links at the bottom of the page but not at the top (or vice versa).

The majority of the people who visit your website probably won't make the effort to scroll down to the bottom of your home page.

Therefore, it's very important to have navigation links appear at the top of your site so they'll be visible to viewers without them having to do any scrolling.

It's also a good idea to repeat your navigation links at the bottom of the page. These are usually done as text links rather than image links. These allow people who have reached the bottom of the page a way to get around your site without having to scroll back to the top of the page first.

9. The body text is too colorful and there are textured or picture backgrounds.

The body text on your site should usually be black on a plain white background. Occasionally you can have other colors (if there's good contrast).

If you have a texture or a picture behind your words, it makes the words hard to read.

You should strive to make things as easy for your users as possible, so get rid of the textured or pictorial background. Or at least put it in areas where there's no foreground text.

DIY RESOURCES (links pop up):

  • Color Scheme Generator ... a fun Flash tool that lets you test out different color combinations and also see how they look to colorblind users.
  • Color Schemer ... another online tool for generating color schemes.

10. Inertia.

All the good advice in the world won't make a difference if you don't act on it.

So send yourself an email right now. Title it "WEBSITE TO DO LIST". In the body write down all the things you need to do (or hire someone else to do) in order to make your website more effective and profitable. Send it to yourself.

Do you want me to take a look at your website and let you know what changes I'd recommend in order to make your site more effective and profitable? I promise to be thorough yet kind. Request a free website usability review now.


Why not hire the author of this article for your next web site project?


<< Back to list of articles

© 2005. All rights reserved.
Please feel free to link to this page.

HOME SERVICES SAMPLES CONTACT ABOUT RESOURCES