We all make common web design mistakes. You must have read a lot about how to create an interesting website, or a good design or a user friendly design. But not all of them focus on one major aspect that is equally important.
Just as how important it is to drive traffic to your website, it is equally important to see to it that there is a minimum level of traffic that is driven away from your website. In short, it is important to reduce the bounce rate of your website. Here are a few points that will help you understand what you should not be doing when creating a website.
1. Avoid PDF Files for Online Reading
Statistics show that user hate it when they come across a PDF file when browsing. It distracts the flow in which they go through the website. A few disadvantages are, it is hard for everyone to use shortcuts when viewing a PDF file. The print options can be tricky to a few. Not all browsers support viewing a PDF file online. Scrolling and navigating within the file is another daunting task.
PDF can be a great choice for digital and print media but not for the online media. It has also been suggested that PDF files present in the website cannot be a good idea for SEO.
2. Change Color of Visited Links
It is said that a majority of the internet users use the internet in a hurry when it comes to finding something they want. The key reason is because time is very precious to them. People do not prefer staying at the same website for long when collecting information.
The navigation links play a key role in this area. The viewers browse through different pages simultaneously. It is a very annoying task to look into the same page again and again. This is mainly because there is nothing to alert them that the particular page has already been visited.
Hence it is very important that you change the color of the visited links. This reduces the bounce rate to a great extent and also gives the viewers a pleasant browsing experience.
3. Optional Font Size
Resizing the font size is another thing to be considered. A lot of websites these days are designed using smaller fonts. For the website viewers who are above the age of 40, things become uncomfortable. See to it that the font sizes are not fixed.
It is always advisable to make the design in such a way the users are able to customize the font sizes for better readability. Also make sure the options given are pretty simple and not pixel wise.
4. Avoid Advertisement based designs
Web users these days are much aware of what they want and what is there on the internet web page. They stop paying attention to unnecessary banners or ads on the page. All they want is a solution to their problems and the information they require. It is not just the advertisements that they ignore but anything that looks like an ad can be ignored as well.
Therefore it is advisable not to include a lot of irrelevant ads on the page unless it is very important or goes along with the content. Also make sure that you do not use excessive blinking and animation texts and images. A pop-up in the page is another thing that has to be seriously considered.
5. Include feedback forms
Users these days are highly goal and business oriented. A minute wasted may seem like an hour wasted. They browse through different sites because they want information about something; it might be a business need or they want to buy a product.
A website terribly fails if proper feedback is not given or if the visitor’s queries are not addressed at the right time. Hence it is very important to design feedback forms or contact forms inside the website and above everything, respond properly.
Guest author Cyril Britto, is a writer and an internet marketing expert from a Canada web design Company TLIsoftware.com that offers a wide array of services ranging from PHP web development to offshore software development and more. You can also write guest posts and share your favorite design tips.