10 common website mistakes
Unfortunately, there are some things we do because that's the way they've always been done. The web is no different and many web designers and website owners are guilty of this.
The common misconception is that if large companies do it, then it must be a good idea. Here are my personal thoughts on the most common mistakes on the web. I won't explain each point. Have a think about them and if you need more info just drop us a line or call on 1300 EFRONT. Sorry for the long post.
1 - Domain Names
- If the core of your domain name is more than 12 characters, it's too long.
- A name that's easy to remember is a good thing.
- Don't use wacky spelling e.g. krazydayze.com.au (unless it can help make it memorable)
- Make sure people can access your site without the www. in front of the domain (many domains for some reason are not setup for this).
- If you have a domain name - use it for your email (somethign@yourdomains.com.au) not your ISP account (something@iprimus.com.au). Seriously, why promote your ISP's domain. It also gives you flexibility when it comes to changing ISPs.
2 - Reduce spam from your web site
- Use a combination of javascript and obfuscation to conceal your email address from spam robots.
Don't do the following... - Don't reverse your email address and ask the user to unreverse it- ua.moc.niamod@gnihtemos = something@domain.com.au. (yes we have seen this, seriously)
- Don't make your visitors just use a contact form - make your email visible.
- Don't present your email address like this - sales2007nospam@somedomain.com.au and then tell visitors to 'remove the nospam from the address'
- Don't present your email like this - something AT somewhere dot com dot au
3. Support Systems
- Do you need one? Can your processes be improved to a point that would make a support form obsolete?
- Can you support a support system? How prompt is your response, and will this just frustrate people more?
- Tell people when they should expect an answer of some kind from a real life person (not an automated/canned response)
- Don't make people jump through hoops before they get to use the form. Give people the answers they need when they need them (during their process).
- Online Chat - "Currently Unavailable", how many times have you seen this - why bother offering?
- If you are using a system, please evaluate the automated responses that get emailed out. How many times do you find that you log a case, then the following email barrage occurs...
You get an email...
- to say you've logged a case,
- another email saying it's been opened or received,
- you've may have had the need to change some details, so you get another email saying it's been changed,
- your ticket is then been updated by the support person so another email comes through,
- then you close it and you get another email saying it's closed,
- then another email asking for feedback about your experience,
- then you get another email saying thanks for the feedback.
4. Registrations
- Why do your visitors need to register at all?
- When do people need to register? Before or at the end of the process? Don't make visitors register just to look around. Chances are you will either get dud information or you will lose a visitor. It also reflects badly on your business.
- Restrictive Usernames/Passwords - don't make people use 8+ digits passwords that contain numbers, characters and then some kind of punctuation e.g. plea5e_make_!t_stop_43. It's the sort of thing Microsoft would make you do.
Unnecessary Information - Don't ask for things you are really not going to use. The user needs to feel that the information they are providing is essential. E.G. don't ask for addresses unless you are sending/delivering something. Don't ask for phone numbers unless you are planning to call. The key here is "planning to use" NOT "may one day use".
5. Images
- Animated Gifs - these look bad and are really annoying. Nothing screams amateur more than an animated image that's plucked off the web and placed on a website.
- Un-optimised Images - Be aware of your image file size. Resize for your page, don't just squash a large image on the page so it fits. It will look bad, take ages to load and say "I don't really care about my site". You don't need software to do this - you can resize images online here if you need.
- Bad Pictures - take the time to get good images. They don't need to be great, just not really bad.
- Image formats - here is a simple rule... photos should be jpeg - cartoon type images gif. If you get this wrong, your images will look bad and the file size will be larger than needed.
6. Content
- Out of date information is bad - enough said.
- Doesn't exist (coming soon pages) - Don't have a link to a page that has a coming soon message.
- Language - less is more.
- Don't use elaborate fonts like Comic Sans for text, stick with the plain fonts.
- Don't use Comic Sans (can't be over emphasized).
- Don't center align everything or make everything a heading
- Break up your content with space - don't be afraid to use the return key.
7. Advertising
- Pop up ads are bad, annoying and make people angry.
- Load times - advertising slows down your site.
- Links within text that go to advertising are bad, e.g. you have an article about dieting, and you make the word "dieting" a link. Visitors click on this link thinking they are going somewhere they can get more information about dieting, but you've sent them to a bookstore where they can buy a diet book.
- If you already sell products on your site, don't advertise competitors' products.
8. Search
- 99% don't work
- Test yours and if you find it doesn't work well use Google within your site - you can have a Google search on your site that will just return pages from your site.
- Try finding something on any large corporate website and you will see what I mean.
9. Animation and Sound
- Do you need a flash intro and if so does your visitor need it?
- Don't play music on your site automatically.
- Don't play music on your site automatically.
- Don't play music on your site automatically.
- Don't play a sound when people mouse over or click a link
- Sound should only be used on sites where people expect sound - YouTube, movie preview sites, kids sites.
10. Various
- Hit Counters - bad. You should have statistics available for that info.
- Status Bar Messages - annoying and bad
- Screen resolution messages- This website is best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. This type of message is a waste of space and assumes your visitors have multiple monitors on their desk that they can switch to.
- Bookmark this site messages - if your site is good enough, people will bookmark it.
- Spaces in page names and links - spaces cause this http://www.yourdomain.com/link%20here.html use underscores instead of spaces e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/link_here.html.
- Java in applications is good. - Java in web pages is bad (java is different to javascript)
- Frames are just bad
- Borders on tables and frames are bad
- Parchment type backgrounds are bad.
Well, that's not a comprehensive list, just stuff off the top of my head.
I feel better now that I have that off my chest.
David
Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Sts Peter and Paul's
We've just refurbished St Peter and Paul's Parish website. We were amazed to hear that the first mass at St Peter and Paul's Parish South Melbourne, was held in 1854, over 150 years ago. Although the website wasn't quite that old, it was time for a revamp.
The site is pretty neat and tidy with some nice features like the use of Google Maps and a content management system that allows the parish to add and change content as they need. If you're in South Melbourne around 10am on a Sunday morning, do yourself a favour and pop into the church to see Father Bob in action.
www.sppchurch.org.au
All the best,
David
Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Welcome Spectrum
Happy new year all, a little late I know but hey....we've been busy :)
A post here today to let you all know we've finished working on the new site for Spectrum BPD. Spectrum was established to support the treatment of people with borderline or severe personality disorder within Victorian. Not only do they offer support and care directly to people with mental illness but they also play a large role in training and supporting the staff and clinicians all over Victoria.
It was a pleasure working with Cathy and the staff at Spectrum. The site is quite content rich and as such required a high level of organization and planning to keep access to the content clear and accessible. Cathy and the staff had this organization in spades and were delightful to work with.
We've incorporated a search engine into the site to help people access information more efficiently. The site also includes a database driven content management system, meaning that once launched, Spectrum can keep their content updates in house with nothing more than a browser. They can add/edit/remove pages and upload images and documents, maintaining control of their site and not being reliant on Efront or anyone else for site updates and maintenance.
Congratulations to all involved!
Posted on Monday, January 15, 2007
Pimp my Blogger
After the increase of online content through blogs, MySpace, YouTube etc, Time Magazine announced that their 2006 "Person of the Year" is you. If you've got more questions about blogging than answers, this article is for you.
What's a blog?
Basically it's whatever you like - a diary, business updates, rants, opinions, information... It's more a concept of adding whatever you want to say online.
What's the difference between a blog and a webpage?
Not much really. Generally you can add items to a blog via a form online rather than having to know all the coding. Usually this is done with a system like Blogger, WordPress, or any of the many others out there.
These companies manage all the archives, so when you create a new post, the old one is kept and listed in a links section of the page (pretty much like this page, where you have our previous posts on the left). This means you don't have to worry about uploading or moving pages around.
Why do it?
Good question! We'll it's a way you can get your message out without hassles. For us, we use it to keep our clients and prospective clients up to date with what we're doing and can do. It give us the ability to demonstrate through our website that we are a living business - and the website isn't just a limp brochure. It allows us to share with readers a bit of who we are not just what we do.
You guys are web developers, so you'd just create your own blog system?
Sure, but why re-invent the wheel? We use Blogger to manage our blog. It does all we need and we can customise it to look exactly like our site. From a visitors perspective it is our site and we can do everything we need. Customising an application like Blogger is a pretty powerful tool.
How much does a blog cost?
You can start blogging for free! You sign up with a blogging company, go through the online setup, pick a template and you're away. If you want to customise your blog, that may take a bit of technical knowledge and it you want to setup something to work with your existing site, let us know and we can help you out.
What's RSS?
Think of RSS as a bookmark. The difference is that it tells you when new articles have been added to a web page or blog and gives you a bit of a summary of what's been written. RSS is built into pretty much all the blogging software packages out there although it may be browser dependent (Internet Explorer 7 may be the first Microsoft browser that can handle RSS). Browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari all have built in support for RSS.
If you'd like help setting up your blog or have more questions, just drop us a line.
Posted on Monday, January 15, 2007
Expanded Tools
We believe it's good to share. So when we come across or integrate useful tools we post them for others to try out or use.
We've expanded our "Tools" menu into a separate area on our site to accommodate a few new additions.
Move large files
If you've ever had to send a large email attachment that's just to big for your ISP to handle, here's an alternative that will allow you to send up to 1Gig in files to a friend. Basically you just upload the file to the server, and then send the url of the download location to the recipient. It's pretty straight forward and very handy.
Fix pictures online
The guys at Snipshot have developed a great online tool that gives people the ability to upload an image, then resize, adjust colours, trim, or crop the image to what they need and then download the image. We've setup a demo on how it can be incorporated into any site to help with image management.
They also have a neat little javascript that you can bookmark which allows you to grab all the images off a webpage you are visiting, and then edit those images before you save them to your machine. You can try the javascript out on the images on this page here.
Good karma,
David
Posted on Friday, January 12, 2007
Find yourself!
We've been doing a bit of work over the last few months with Google Maps and are really excited by the possibilities.
If you thought that Google Maps was just another online map, then you're missing a huge opportunity.
Here are the basics...
- Have a map on your site that shows the location of your store/business
- Display an info bubble on your location which can contain pictures, text, links and even multiple tabs
- Display multiple points on the map
- Display satellite images of locations and not just road map style views
This is just the start!
If you think "Yes, but what if I want to change things... I need to come back to you guys each time". Not at all, we can setup Google Maps for your site with the functionality you need. This means we can add functionality that allows you to add/change points and content as you need. After all, it's your website and your map.
Try it out here.
So what are you waiting for? Find yourself!
David
Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007