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Is your Web site poorly designed?25 ways to tell if it's out of style, or was developed by an amateur. By Jim Frazier A Web site can be a beautiful thing. It can be simple, elegant and effective. Or it can be ugly, boorish, and sloppy. There are many examples of the latter. Is your site one of them? If it was designed more than a couple of years ago, if it was done by an amateur or part-time designer, or if your nephew did it, there is a good chance that your site will fit into that unfortunate latter category. Here are 25 ways you can evaluate your site. Meeting a few of the criteria isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are reasons why you might want to violate many of these rules. Rules ARE meant to be broken - but only when you know what you're doing. Until then, try to avoid making these bush-league mistakes. And if you have already made them, call up your nephew and get them fixed right away. Better yet, call a professional. But get them fixed! 1. Look at the source code of the Web page. Near the top may be a line indicating what software was used to create the it. If the developer used "FrontPage", then there is a chance (only a chance - don't get paranoid) you're not going to be happy with the rest of rest of this checklist. While many pros use FrontPage (including me), it is also the preferred software of most beginners and amateurs as well. Be on the lookout as we cruise through the rest of this list. 2. Again, looking at the source of your page, see if there are any "meta tags" shown at the top of the page. These tags help search engines deal with your page. If there are none at all, don't be surprised if your page doesn't rate very highly with search engines. You should have three of them: "title", "keywords" and "description". 3. Does the title of your page reflect the most important keywords for your business? If it just says the name of your company, you're missing out on one of the most important Web promotion strategies. Search engines pay a lot of attention to the actual title of the page. So make sure your page has words in it that relate to your business. If you're a gas station, for example, make sure that the title of the page includes "gas station". 4. Do you have anything other than white as a background color? Some colors may be appropriate if they fit in well with the overall design of your site. But be very careful. By the way, you get bonus demerits for a black or very dark background and double bonus demerits for yellow text. The best combination? Try black text on a white background. 5. Are there banner ads and affiliate program ads on your site? If you're using the site to promote your business, why are you offering advertising for other companies? You may have chosen a site that offers free Web hosting in exchange for putting advertising on your site. Instead, pay the extra money for your Web hosting. You may be thinking that a banner exchange would be worthwhile to promote your site. But ask yourself, do you put advertising on your brochures? Advertising has no business on your Web site unless it's part of your business model. If you're a content provider or you offer free Web services and count on advertising, that's one thing. But if you're in the dry cleaning business, don't advertise dog food. 6. Do you have many different colors of text? Remember that text links will have different colors, so you'll have plenty of colored text on your page. You don't have to enhance it with blue, orange, pink, green and red text as well. Well, OK. Green and red are OK at Christmas time. 7. Do you have underlined text that is not a link? This is a cardinal sin. It confuses your guests. Use bolding or italics to differentiate the text. NEVER use underlining. 8. Do you have "wall-to-wall" text - lines that go from one side of the browser all the way to the other side with virtually no margins? When you print a letter, you usually leave a margin. You should do the same with your Web site. Long lines of text are hard to read. The only time when wall-to-wall text is even vaguely appropriate is if the text is short or bulleted. But if you have paragraph-length text, make the lines shorter and leave a margin. 9. Do you have more than one animated GIF on your page? If you do, you get triple demerit points. And the one you DO have should be customized to your company...not something downloaded from the Web. You get quintuple demerits if it's an opening and closing mailbox beside your email address. 10. Do you have contact information (email, phone number, and address) within easy reach of your guests? Complete contact information should be at the bottom of your page if you have a simple site. If your site is more complex, there should be a link to contact information on every page. 11. Do you have a hit counter on your page? Why? Aside from the fact that this is one more graphic that has to download, why are you divulging important marketing information? In most cases, the number of hits that your site receives is nobody's business. If there are only a few, you've got nothing to brag about. If it's too many, you probably don't want your competition to know how well you're doing. Besides, since these counters can be set to any number, no one will trust high numbers anyway. If you want statistics for your Web site, look to your hosting company - they should provide that information. 12. Does your page look stale? Maybe the revision date is more than one or two months old, or perhaps you haven't updated your coming events calendar in a year, or you might not have changed your copyright date - it still says 1996. You don't HAVE to update your page on a frequent basis. Just don't make it necessary. If you don't have the time or inclination to maintain it, then don't show dates on the site, and don't try to offer current information (like calendars and seasonal promotions) that will soon be out of date. Do you date your brochures and your business cards? Of course not. So if you're only going to update your site as often as you update those items, why show a date on the page? Conversely, if you DO update your site frequently, then show the date. I update my site at least weekly. A current date on the page lets your guests know that the site is current and reliable. 13. Do the graphics on your page make it very slow? It should download in less than 15 seconds over a 28.8 KBPS connection. Sizeable graphics are a big reason for slow pages. You can make your page faster by reducing the number of graphics (particularly the irrelevant ones), reducing the real estate they occupy on your page, and by optimizing them using a graphics tool. 15. Do you have too much bolded text? The main text on your page should never be bolded unless you only have a small amount. If you have paragraph length text, do not make it bold. 16. Is there too much clip-art on your page? Simple graphics that are not specific to your business are usually perceived as clip art. Sprinkling lots of irrelevant graphics on your page, particularly clip art, looks very amateurish. 17. Have you centered too much of your text? Keep almost all of your text lined up on the left. Centering too much text is one of the most common mistakes that new designers make. For headlines and special text, centering can be OK. But beware of making everything centered. By left-aligning your text, you make your page easier to scan and read. If everything is centered, you make it more difficult for your readers to find anything. 18. Are you using "under construction" or "coming soon" pages? If you haven't completed a page on your site (and who hasn't), then don't put links to it. When the page is ready for prime-time, you can add the links. Don't waste your guests' time by having them click on links that don't do anything. You'll lose credibility and aggravate them. 19. Do you have a background image or texture? This can sometimes work, but 98.3% of the time, it doesn't look professional. Depending on your business, a carefully chosen image or texture might work. If you are a landscaper, a nice subtle grassy background might be just the thing. Another common gimmick is to use a company logo as the background. This almost never works. 20. Does your site use frames? While there are some professionals who use frames effectively (and sparingly), in general the practice is not recommended. Framed sites are not browser-friendly, do not interact well with search engines, and make it difficult for users to bookmark interior pages. If you absolutely must use frames, do not allow borders or scroll-bars to be visible. 21. Do you use Java to provide animation or mouseovers? Javascript ought to be sufficient for this kind of thing. If you use Java, particularly on your opening page, you risk presenting your guests with a dysfunctional page. If they have an older browser that doesn't support Java, or if they have Java disabled for security reasons, they won't see your site the way you want. 22. Do you have scrolling text on the bottom line of the browser? This is a technique that was frequently exploited when it first became available, but it has become unpopular because it takes over a line of your guest's browser that shows useful information. And it's usually only marketing information, so your guests won't read it anyway. They will be annoyed by it instead. 23. Doe your site have multiple fonts on each page? Try to keep it to two typefaces per page. This would mean one font, for example, for your headers and another for the main body of text. And if you can get it to ONE font per page, that's even better. Don't mix up your fonts to make your site visually appealing. It won't work. Use graphics, tables, colors, etc. 24. Does your page look different on Netscape? If you don't know whether it does or not, that's part of the problem. Failure to develop for multiple browsers and test compatibility is a frequent and serious mistake for developers. There are several major browsers on the market, including Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera. And we can't forget about Macs. You should test your page on multiple computers, browsers and operating systems. You'll be very surprised. 25. Does your site have spelling errors and grammatical mistakes? Frequently, the Webmaster is the one doing much of the actual writing for your site. And writing well is often not their strong suit. Always have someone else proofread your site, even if an English major wrote the original copy. There are even services available that will do it for you if you're nervous about your own grammar skills. Nothing can damage your credibility as much as a poorly written, badly spelled, and English-mangling Web site. Those are the top 25 ways you can tell if you're dealing with an amateur-created site, or one that is a few years old. Hopefully it isn't yours. Don't believe me? Are you a little bit defensive? Here's a suggestion to prove my point. Visit YOUR favorite sites. Have a look at the top sites on the Web at www.top9.com or www.100hot.com. Do THEY make any of the mistakes I've listed? If I've convinced you, and your site has a few of these design errors, then grab your Web designer by the scruff of the neck, sit them down at their computer, and have them fix everything. Feed them plenty of Diet Coke and Twinkies until they're finished. Of course, once they've figured out how to design a site well, they'll leave to work for a Web development firm. But at least you'll have a snazzy Web site.
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