What Not To Do When Designing Your Website

Every now and then it’s a good idea to give your website a fresh look. Whether it’s because your company focus has changed, you’ve undergone re-branding or simply that your old site is looking tired, a fresh new image will breathe life into your online marketing.

Of course, along with a new design, fresh content is always a good idea so hiring a good SEO copywriter is always a great investment.

But getting back to your website – there are certain things that really should be avoided when you are considering a revamp:

Don’t over complicate

We all like an easy life so your website has to be simple to use. If your reader lands on your site and they can’t navigate around it, they’ll leave. Make sure your navigation is clear and very easy to follow. Also don’t over do the number of links on your website. There’s nothing worse than being faced with text littered with links and – more to the point – vast quantities of boxes in the sidebar containing links and asking them to do umpteen things.

You don’t want confused readers, you want relaxed readers.

Make your navigation simple and logical.

Dare I say it? Flash

Once upon a time, Flash was unreadable to Google and therefore did nothing for your SEO. Today, although Google has developed the ability to crawl some Flash, it will still limit the effectiveness of your search engine optimisation so it’s important to keep its use to an absolute minimum. So rather than filling your site with it, how about utilising your white space to add some great content instead.

Images

Everyone loves pretty pictures but, just like Flash, you can over do it.

Images that enhance the text are great. But if you have too many your reader won’t know where to look first. Keep them to a minimum and make sure you choose wisely. A bad image can kill a website.

When used well, images can also help you with your SEO.

Loading

If your website takes a long time to load it will turn off visitors faster than Jonny Vegas in a jock strap, and it will also have a detrimental effect as far as the search engine spiders are concerned. Google likes sites that load quickly as this post from the Google Official Webmaster Central Blog shows.

What’s your offer?

When redesigning don’t get so wrapped up in making it so pretty that you forget what your website’s there for in the first place. Many website owners are so obsessed with SEO they completely forget what is it they want their readers to do. Yes, SEO and organic search results are important, but so is your offer and call to action. If  you neglect those you will end up with an ineffective website.

Keeping your image fresh is very important but just make sure you always have your website goals in mind when redesigning your site. Don’t be tempted to go OTT – simple and effective is the best way to do.