If you are designing a website there are a number of things to bear in mind if you want the site to achieve your desired ends. Most often the desired end is sales although that is not always the case. The following web design tips – do’s and dont’s – should be taken into consideration.

1. Website visitors can have a very short attention span and will click away very quickly if they see something they don’t like or can’t find what they are looking for. Make your website readable and easy to follow. Don’t clutter it up with lots of flashing bells and whistles.

2. Reverse out (white on a black background) is proven to be 7% harder to read than black on white. Yet you see this all over the internet. Do not use reverse out. Equally don’t use something like a light grey font on a light blue background for the same reason – it is hard to read.

3. Use a font that is big enough for the visitor to read. I am not suggesting that you should “shout” at the reader, but remember that as people age their eyesight is not as good as it used to be. How many times do you see a very small font – often combined with the sins of point 2 above?

4. Unless the purpose of your website is to earn money through banner ads and affiliate links, simply do not have banner ads, especially the infuriating flashing ones. Ask yourself what is the point of attracting traffic to your website and then immediately driving it away again with a banner ad.

5. If you cannot write good English (or whatever your language is) get a copywriter, or at least someone who has a good grasp of the language, to write for you. Many websites contain copy which is so much gibberish. The visitor will think that if the website cannot even bother to write in good English then what on earth is the product that it is promoting likely to be? Rubbish also.

6. Have a simple colour scheme. Don’t have twenty different colours all over the site just because you think it looks pretty. It doesn’t.

7. Make things easy to find. Your visitor should not have to spend half a minute trying to find your Contact button or About Me page. Half a minute is a very long time on the internet.

8. Make sure that your page loads quickly. One to two seconds is all it should take. Half a minute is a very long time on the internet………

9. Don’t keyword stuff. Google doesn’t like to see keywords twenty times in a paragraph any more. Your readers have never liked to see keywords twenty times in a paragraph – it makes it look like rubbish.

10. Write short paragraphs of no more than three sentences. One solid block of text of 1,000 words that drones on and on and on will almost certainly lose the visitor before he has got a third of the way through it.

11. (Bonus tip). When you have finished your website and you are totally and utterly happy with it put it away until tomorrow. Then take another look at it. You will find things that make you cringe. Alter them. Then put it away until the following day. Alter the things that still make you cringe. Only now do you upload your masterpiece for the world to see.

For more tips on creating an effective website, check out our other articles on website creation.