Common Design Mistakes
by Jennifer Johnson at PromotingYourSite.com
Since opening my new site and having a few of my articles published in various newsletters, I have received lots of requests for site evaluations. As I visited these sites, I began to see a pattern forming. Almost without exception, all the sites had the same basic mistakes. If I had the inclination, I could've copied and pasted the same recommendations on virtually all the sites.
For the benefit of new site designers and for the "old pros" who are looking to improve their sites, I'm going to detail the common mistakes I believe many designers make.
Designing for a specific "fill in the blank"
You know, it's so common today to buy a CD only to get it home to find out it will just play on Pioneer systems. Darn the luck! I would have to own a JVC, wouldn't I? It's just like those videotapes that will only play on a specific brand of VCR.
What? Haven't had that happen to you? To be honest, me either. There's a very simple reason why. If you are selling something, it's common sense that you would want the largest number of people possible to be able to use it.
Using our CD example from above, you would be shooting yourself in the foot in a major way if you decided to cut out a share of the potential market for no reason other than they didn't want to play your CD on the same type of system you use.
Do you have any idea how many site designers do this in some manner to their visitors? I can tell you, judging by my experience, PLENTY. Not everyone has a monitor that will allow you to have a desktop area of a googol by a bazillion. In other words, have pity on us folks who choose to surf at 640x480. On my sites, 800x600 is the most common screen resolution, but 640x480 is not far behind.
The problem that arises if you design for a large screen res is that you will spawn one of the most vile creatures known to Webkind: the horizontal scrollbar. What this means is that in order to view the entire width of the page, visitors who are using a lower res must read, scroll right, scroll down, scroll left, read, scroll right, scroll down, scroll left...are you beginning to notice an extremely annoying pattern here?
On most of the sites I've seen, this could easily be avoided by rearranging a few elements or slightly reducing the length of some of the graphics. It's also best not to design for an extremely high color setting. Some people still use 256 colors (or less). What looks magnificent at 16 or 32 bit can look downright U-G-L-Y after a good dither.
I'm of the opinion you shouldn't design specifically for Netscape or for MSIE. It's OK to utilize some of the features specific to either as long as you can view it in the other browser and have the page still look good.
You might be wondering how you avoid these things. Look at your page at different screen resolutions, color settings, and in AT LEAST Netscape and MSIE. You should *always* do this before publishing your page; that way, you can catch (and correct) any errors before the public does.
Using specific widths in tables
When specifying a WIDTH for a TABLE or TD, it is almost always better (in my opinion) to specify a relative width as opposed to an absolute width. All this means is that instead of specifying a width in terms of pixels, you should specify it in terms of a percentage. For example, instead of WIDTH="some number", you should use WIDTH="some %". This usually allows your page to display more nicely on a wider variety of browser window sizes.
Of course there are times when it becomes necessary to specify an absolute width. As a general rule, though, use percentages when you can.
Poor graphics
Realize your limitations. If you aren't capable of designing professional looking graphics, hire someone else to do it for you. Bad graphics can let the air out of your web site's tires. Have you ever visited a site and been reluctant to do business with them because of the graphics they used? I have been in that position many times.
Don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying that unless you're Van Gogh you don't have any business doing business online. What I'm saying is that if you're operating a business site, your graphics shouldn't look like a toddler's first experiment with finger paints. When people come to your site and see low quality graphics, I'd venture a guess that they wonder if A) you didn't have enough money to hire a professional or B) you don't care what image you're projecting. Either perception could be very detrimental to your online business hopes.
I believe almost everyone is capable of designing his or her own graphics, but if you don't feel like you're up to the task, do your business a favor and hire someone else to do the job. If you put a little effort into looking, you can probably find someone who will do the work at a surprisingly reasonable price. You might ask fellow site owners to recommend a good designer.
Meta tags
Don't be fooled into thinking that with some magic META tag incantation you'll suddenly appear in the top 5 on every search engine. META tags do have their place as a promotional tool, however. What I would like to discuss here is the META NAME="keywords" tag. I see far too many sites who don't utilize this tag to its full potential or don't use it at all.
To get the most out of your keywords tag, I would suggest using some 2+ word keywords. For example, let's say you're operating a site like mine that offers free promotional advice. If you list "free" for one of your keywords, you'll probably be somewhere in the middle of several thousand (or several hundred thousand) results. The reason is because "free" is a highly searched for word. You would be much better off using "free promotional advice" or something along those lines, because a search performed for that phrase shouldn't return as many results.
Try to make your keywords tag keyword *dense*. Ex: cat toys, cat food, cat names NOT cat toys, food, names, pet products, cats. Avoid repeating any word or phrase too often, though, so you won't be accused of "spamming". On my sites, I try not to use the same word or phrase more than 3-5 times.
Poorly chosen title tag
Your TITLE tag should be descriptive, interesting, and it should contain keywords. According to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch <http://www.searchenginewatch.com>, pages that are relevant to searched for terms can rank lower because they lack keywords in the TITLE tag. In some search engines, your TITLE tag is the only thing that is displayed on the search results. Which is more descriptive:
-- home page
or
-- Picture of Lil' Bit, My Cat, Eating Cheese Puffs
I've seen a number of sites with TITLE tags like "Jack's Page" and even some without a TITLE tag. This is just another example of small things you can do to hurt your site in a big way.
Granted, more than likely, none of these problems will be the kiss of death for your site, but seemingly insignificant things can make a huge difference. Why not give your site the best possible chance? There are enough things that will work against you once you set up shop online, why add to that list yourself?