Can you recognize a ten year old web page? If you think about it, it’s pretty easy – it’ll have lots of chunky text, with no hint of a style sheet. It may have a bunch of animated GIFs, and have a completely static navigation page. Sadly, most internet entrepreneurs start out making their web site vintage Beverly Hills 90210; even worse, many of those sites never get updated. If that sounds all too familiar, here are some Web Marketing Strategies we have to help you avoid the excesses (both antique and postmodern) for your web site.
In addition to the colors being consistent, the theme and layout should also remain the same throughout the site. This is part of your image and you want it to be consistent.
Try to avoid creating a web page that people have to download components to view your page. The easier your page is to navigate, the longer people will hang around. This doesn’t mean your page has to be boring. There are plug-in’s that are common you can use. Some of the more common are Shockwave, Java, and Active X.
Avoid using components that require the user to download plug-ins to view. You can probably expect someone to have a Flash, Shockwave or PDF plug in, and a Java Virtual Machine is all but standard these days but anything that requires a download and install is a barrier to entry. On a similar note, recall that usability is king on the web. Don’t overuse special effects and images; waaay too many web sites out there look cluttered because they have a bajillion animated GIFs strewn about, on top of a flashy (and unreadable) color schemeusually with an annoying piece of music running on a constant loop in the background.
Choosing a good theme, colors and layout will compensate for avoiding some of the more fancy options. Keeping my page consistent with the use of common plug-in’s and limited effects, is of great benefit with smart web marketing strategies and will be for you too if you implement it.
In the interests of making your site more easily maintained, use a content management system to control assets; use Cascading Style Sheets (well, the subset that are implemented properly in both IE 7 and Firefox) to keep your formatting separate from your content. That way, if you need to tweak the design, you do so in one file, rather than in 300.
Focus on your content; it’s why people are coming to your site. Focus on navigability; a good index and clearly stated intentions will do wonders for repeat visitors, and make it likelier that you’ll get repeat visitors. When writing content, avoid jargon, and speak in nice, clear sentences. Sure, you can say that the CSS manifold space explificates the eigenstat of the user interface experience but if your eyes glazed over on that, imagine how a whole site of that would read.
If your information is always the same, people won’t always come back. Make a point to update your site regularly and let visitors know that you do that. You will be able to keep attention better if people know that they will find new information on subsequent visits.
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