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Dodson Custom Homes | Luxury Home Builder
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Re-design of website and company materials
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Marketing tool for home info and sales.
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Blog Archive
5 Important Rules To Remember in Website Design
As a business owner making your debut into internet marketing, it is important that you plan the design and development of your first web site with convenience and ease of use for your customers, as the primary considerations. Often, my clients ask me what advise I can give for them to have the most user-friendly websites. Here are the basic rules: 
1) Don't use splash pages
Splash pages are highly visual pages designed to show off your designers skills. Of course, your visitors don't care about that. They arrived at your site searching for a solution, and splash pages, which are the first ones they see, are nothing more than flashy roadblocks delaying their search for that solution. If you don't want to dampen your customers' enthusiasm, especially those in a buying mode, don't use splash pages.
2) Avoid too many distracting banner ads
I'm one with those who still think there's a purpose and value to those banner ads, if placed correctly. Strident critics of this marketing widget point out that most people, more often than not, just ignore them. That may be true, but the fact is, people are still clicking on them.
Anything done excessively, however, is counter-productive. If you pepper your pages with colorful (and distracting) banner ads, you're doing what some experts call "interruption marketing," and your customers will have the impression that your priority is to make money, not to provide solutions.
3) Create easy-to-use navigation
Why do you think blogs on Worpress are very popular? I mean, not all blogs offer the same caliber of content, but generally, people stay longer in these sites, not only because, they're interested in what the authors are saying, but because they can easily jump from one page to another, without getting lost, in the process. Don't present over-complicated navigation options to your visitors - they just might push the "back" button instead.
4) Be consistent with your pages
Ever visited a website in which you felt like you've been sent to an entirely different site every time you click on a page? Confusing, to say the least. Chances are, if you insist on using mismatched fonts, graphics, and themes for your pages, your visitors will end up confused and disoriented. If you want your visitors to stay longer, be consistent - and keep it all simple and straightforward.
5) Don't use audio on your site
Arriving at a website and be greeted by a canned voice or music, can sometimes be disconcerting. Remember, most people, before they clicked on the link to your site, have music playing either on speakers or headsets. You don't want to insert a jarring note into that. Audio on a website can be pretty annoying, especially if it goes on and on, leaving the visitor no option but to just turn his speakers off or leave your site.