Eric Ollenburg

Web Design mistakes and how to avoid them.

Design over Functionality

To have a beautiful web site that wins awards for excellence in web design is great, but if the designer has not taken into account the principles of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), no one will be able to find your web site and experience your thing of beauty.

Your web site may be old and may still do it's job telling people about your business, but if it loads slow and the content is a little out of date, then it's definitely time to consider a redesign.

All Flash

Search Engine technology has made some advances and Search Engines are beginning to read some flash, but web site design that's all flash is mostly unreadable for Search Engines.

An all Flash web site design is elegant and beautiful, but the Search Engine ranking will be very low. As for major corporations who have an all flash web site with a very high ranking, they have so much external linkage (links to the web site from other web sites) that it doesn't matter. And unless you have millions of dollars to compete, you must approach this strategically.

The way I design an all Flash web site is to incorporate html links and content with a site map in a way that blends with the Flash to increase page ranking for Search Engines. This way, people can find you when they search your name and when they use keyword search for your product or services. Matching functionality to your beautiful Flash web site design.

Frames

A web site built with Frames is very difficult for a search engine to index the web sites pages and content. They also have an un-natural feel to them which makes if hard to get an impression of you web site.

When a search engine has difficulty navigating your site due to frames, a web site actually get penalized and it's ranking gets lowered.

What's more is some browsers don't even support frames, which would isolate you from potential customers.

Splash Pages / Intro

Well folks, there is a period in web history when Flash was first introduced - it's actually called the "Skip Intro" era. I find this very humorous because I remember when it seemed every web site I visited I had to click "Skip Intro" to get to the web site.

This web site design really make a visual impact for the visitor, unfortunately from an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) point of view, it's useless. Unless...they are done properly.

If you desire to make this visual impact and presentation, the web site design must be done strategically for both SEO and for visitor convenience. I do this by blending html elements into the page with an option of "Skip Forever" that remembers that visitor as to avoid future annoyance.

Slow Loading

Simply put, a web page that loads slow is going to put off both human visitors and search engine crawlers.

You have only about eight seconds to impress, human visitors expect fast and do not have the patience to wait for slow loading pages and search engines almost always rank fast loading web pages over slow loading web pages.

If your web site has slow loading pages, they should be replaced.

The Great Wall of Text

Yes, it's great to have lot's of text for both information and for Search Engine Optimization, but if your initial web page is a big blocky wall of text you are going to really scare people off.

It's essential to break things up with graphic elements, horizontal dividers and smaller paragraphs with links to get more information if the visitor is interested. It's also good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to have more pages with dedicated content to crawl opposed to everything all at once.

As president Regan once said, "Tear down that wall!"

Low Contrast for Text

This one is a bit of a no brain-er but I've seen even the design giant Apple commit this #1 web design no-no.

If your visitors have to struggle to read your website content, they will go elsewhere complaining bitterly under their breath.

Bottom line; make sure your web design text is clear and easy to read.

Spelling Errors

It happens to us all, no one is perfect but always spell check before posting to the world! One or two here and there is OK but I when there is error after error it just looks silly and unprofessional.

Images For Links

This is a bad practice because Search Engine can not read an image therefore it doesn't know what relevance it has.

Another problem this creates is for disabled people with screen readers, a link that's an image doesn't tell them what it goes to and really hinders their navigating experience.

Don't get me wrong, images can be used as links and buttons, it just has to be done right with something called "image replace," this method replaces the text that's actually in the page with a graphic. Keeping both people and search engine robots ever so happy!

Dead Links

One thing that lowers search engine ranking very fast is dead links - links to pages that no longer exist.

It also frustrates users when they come to a page that no longer exists, no one likes to see ERROR 404. :(

This goes for external links pointing to your web site as well, which is why advertising on something like Craigslist postings that expire in seven days is a bad practice - it will actually lower you search engine ranking.

Out of Date Content

A Search Engine will begin to ignore a site as if it no longer exists if the web site content does not update and change. In the past it may have been OK to leave your content for months, but these days with news and information flying faster than what seems the speed of light, your web site will drop off the radar.

Another thing to think about is that people get put off if they come back to a web site and nothing has changed - it may be the last time they visit.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG is an acronym, What You See Is What You Get. It means web pages are created in "Design" mode in a web site editor software program such as Adobe Dreamweaver.

It is a bad practice to create web site design with this method for a number of reasons:

• Layers and positioning can easily get into the mix which is a very unstable web site design - this is very inconsistent and things will move quite a bit from browser to browser.
• Stiff, blocky table web site design is many times the result of wysiwyg. A page should flow like a stream of information down a page once the css (cascading style sheet) has been un-activated. If the web site design is stiff and blocky, it makes it difficult for Search Engine crawlers to know what your page is about and practically impossible for disabled people with screen readers to use your site.
• Excessive code - when using wysiwyg for web site design, it can create twice to five times as much code resulting in slower loading pages. Slower loading web pages get lower search engine ranking and frustrate visitors. For example, if you have 15 pages in your web site and you declare the color RED for some text, it will create 15 different styles that all do the same thing. Now imagine a whole web site doing this same procedure!

In summary, when creating a web site yourself, be sure you know your html basics, or, if you are having someone do your web site design for you, be sure to request that it be done with css and to view the clean web site code with no styling applied. The content should flow in a smooth, steady progression vertically down the page.

Stiff, blocky Table web design

This style of web design is just plain unnatural in every aspect. Imagine trying to read a book where there is a opening paragraph that continues on the next page below a different paragraph, then continues above the opening paragraph to the left...it would be very confusing indeed. Tables were designed to be tables - to display tabular data!

This is essentially what stiff, blocky table design does to a search engine when it's trying to crawl the web site. The information and navigation is all over instead of a smooth, steady vertical flow from top to bottom. This will make the web site low in Search Engine ranking.

Table layout also makes it very hard and sometimes impossible for disabled people with screen readers to successfully navigate your site.

Now, don't get me wrong here, tables do have there place and I do use tables in web design. They are actually very useful. Used properly and with discretion, integrating tables into a web design is very useful for function and for future web site editing for clients.

Advertising

Almost every web site needs to generate revenue or there would be no web site's at all.

Just do it tastefully and blend ads into the page nicely. This way, people will click an ad if it's something relevant that they are interested in. Try incorporating something like Google Adsense, they only output relevant ads that the visitor has been searching for.

When people want flashing lights and dinging noises, they go to Las Vegas, not the web. :)

Difficult Website - "Dave there seems to be a problem"

Don't make people have to work to navigate your web site and especially don't make it hard for people to spend money if you are selling something on your web site! Nothing burns me more than when I'm actually trying to purchase something and it's very complicated.

Have your shopping cart lightning fast for those impulse purchases or link a PayPal shopping cart if you are a newer web site so people will trust you.