Thinking about designing your own website? Think again about adding any of these features 1. Animated gifs. You know the ones: the dancing baby, the rotating email sign. No matter what you chose, nothing screams out amateur quite like an animated gif. Next! 2. Mouse trails. Those little pictures, or strings of letters that follow your mouse everywhere it goes. In my case, they follow my mouse all the way to the back button, so I can surf on to somewhere less annoying. 3. Music. If I wanted to listen to music, Id play some myself. Meanwhile, Im reaching for that back button again 4. Indecipherable colour schemes. Navy blue text on a black background. White on yellow. Ye Gods! It hurts my eyes just to look at it, never mind read it. Just say no. 5. Poor spelling and grammar. Specifically: text speak. Its bad enough on your mobile phone, never mind your website. If youre going to go to the trouble of setting up a website, at least make sure people can read it without cringing. Or itll be that back button for you So, thats how to get it wrong, but how do you get it right? Theres no great mystery to great website design. Simplicity is the key; while there are a few people out there who go crazy for the piped music and the animations, there are probably a thousand more whore just driven crazy by them. A clean, simple website isnt going to offend anyone or prevent people from actually viewing the content of your site. Remember that unless youre a website designer yourself, its the content that really matters. Visitors dont come to your website to admire the pretty colours: they come to buy something, or to find information. If the thing theyre looking for is obscured by your website design, they wont stick around to find it. At the end of the day, design is a matter of taste, and youll never be able to please everyone who visits your site. Functionality is a different matter altogether, however. Make sure your website is clearly designed, content rich, and easy to navigate, and youll be on the right lines. Just stay away from those animated gifs |
