In fact, a website can lose about one-third of its potential customers due to poor design, according to a recent user study conducted by some professionals.

Take a long hard look at your site. Or ask a friend to give you a brutally honest review of your site. Does it pass the test of professionalism?

Are the graphics of good quality and clear? Is the formatting, font size and font colors consistent throughout the site? Or does your site commit design mistakes that speak amateur as soon as it loads?

There are some common mistakes website owners make that may cause visitors to leave early. What are these?

They post “Under Construction” signs all over the site.

Under Construction signs posted all over the website spell unprofessional in a big way. Seasoned site owners understand the power of patience. They know that timing the launch of your completed website is much more effective than doing it prematurely.

Be patient. Wait until the website is complete before publicizing your site. Doing it this way, your visitors will be impressed and gain trust faster. They won’t feel uneasy and run away because they see amateur stamped all over your site with each Under Construction sign.

Some place brightly colored counters on every page as a badge of honor.

The truth is most everyone knows counters can be set to whatever number you like. If you don’t want to start your counter at zero, you can easily start it at 10,000. It raises a red flag of questions. Therefore, it may repel your visitors faster than it attracts them. Why raise the red flag of questions, if you don’t have to.

Look at your in-depth statistics instead if you need to analyze your traffic.

Some websites do not use copyright statements.

Some uniformed site owners don’t know that their copyright is effective the moment their creative work is set in a fixed form. So they fail to put their stamp of ownership on their work.

If you truly own your work, claim it. Post your copyright information at the bottom of every page.

If you plan to host a web conference, it is important to learn how to use web conferencing service correctly. Although technology is a grand help when it comes to running a business, it can be disastrous if used in the wrong way by someone who does not know what they are doing.

Whether you are the attendee or the host of a web conference, it is important to behave in the same manner as you would in a face-to-face setting. Online conference is not an opportunity to multi-task or goof off during your web conference. Turn off your email and cell phone, log off that MMORPG, pay attention and be ready to participate in the meeting. Dress appropriately as you would for a business meeting and remember to take notes, just as you would do in-person.

For a successful web meeting, you must be a good facilitator who is able to meet goals, keep agendas and keep everyone focused. Being the host of meeting, you are the boss and anyone attending the web conference that does not comply with what you expect must be asked to log off the web meeting.

If you are looking for ways to cut cost and travel time, web conferencing products has many benefits that have proven effective for a number of businesses all around the world.

Web branding is a means of identifying a business’s web site by providing an image association. It is very similar to a company, such as Pepsi, running ads in newspapers, magazines, and commercials on television. Most brands come in the form of a symbol. The symbol is used for representation, while the brand is meant to package all of the associations with the company.

Your brand should draw potential customers in and encourage them to want to learn more. Whether it’s catchy phrases, bright logo designs, or imagery, it should be something in which people will show an interest in.
CODANK Charlotte Web Design has provided a few web branding and web design tips below. Read them carefully and plan accordingly.

Uniqueness – Differentiate your web page and brand from your competitors. If you don’t, it won’t really be memorable!
Color – Choosing the right color is very important. Color stimulates emotions and carried with it subconscious associations to numerous things and characteristics.
Clean Layout Design: A clean layout that uses a lot of white space enhances a site’s looks. Try to keep the focus on your content. Use fonts that will be available on all computers to prevent any errors.
Optimum Load Time: Make sure your load time is low.

About CODANK Charlotte Web Design

CODANK is a top Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company located in Charlotte, NC. The company is dedicated to providing a broad range of web design services. CODANK specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Graphic Design, Online Marketing, and Web Design and Development.

For more information, visit CODANK Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company at www.codank.com

Branding can come in the form of a slogan, symbol, name, or color combination. Web branding is not that much different from what you may see in a newspaper, local magazine, or on television. When using a slogan, symbol, name or color combination as a brand, you are packaging all of the associations, experiences, and characteristics into an abstract construct.

A company’s online brand should be just as eye-catching as their print brand. Whether it’s a logo, phrases, or imagery, the brand should consist of an idea in which will intrigue potential clients.

Below are a few web branding tips provided by CODANK Charlotte Web Design. We advise you to take into consideration each tip before launching your online brand.

Consistency – Make your brand memorable. Make sure to be consistent in your web design when you’re building it. Keep consistent colors, visuals and typography.

Uniqueness – Differentiate your web page and brand from your competitors. If you don’t, it won’t really be memorable!

Color Combination– Choosing the right color is very important. Color stimulates emotions and carried with it subconscious associations to numerous things and characteristics.

Position and Size – Position your logo in the upper left area of the webpage – that is the area most people look to see what site they’re on.

Character – Give your brand character. You can do this by introducing it with a little personality; something that your audience can associate their selves with.

About CODANK Charlotte Web Design

CODANK is a top Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company located in Charlotte, NC. The company is dedicated to providing a broad range of web design services. CODANK specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Graphic Design, Online Marketing, and Web Design and Development.

For more information, visit CODANK Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company at www.codank.com

However, there are certain key elements that should be considered before committing to a particular company.

The first tip is to think about your budget. What can you afford? Do not be carried away with sales pitches and slick marketing tactics. Do not over extend yourself.

If you are about to host a site for business purposes, the following elements are important:

a. SSL Certificates: People are getting smart about online security. More and more of them are looking for the padlock icon and “https” prefix in the address bar of their browser before submitting personal information online. If your Web site doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, visitors may leave before making a purchase, creating an account or even signing up for a newsletter.

b. Customer/Tech Support: Does the company have 24/7 customer support? If they do not have this basic service do not use them!

c. Spam Free Email: Is the email service protected from fraud, spam, and viruses. Make sure it is compatible with Microsoft® Outlook®, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird .

d. Quick Shopping Cart: Online Sales are expected to hit $144 billion in the U.S. and £78bn in the UK by 2010. Isn’t it time you got your piece of the pie? With a quick Shopping Cart, you can create and publish a stand-alone Internet store or add one to your existing Web site in a matter of minutes. Make sure the company you choose provides this service if you are considering e-commerce with your site.

e. Hosting and Servers: From a basic Web site to a massive online superstore, look for full-service hosting solutions for every need and your budget. Make sure the company offers up to 99.9% guaranteed uptime, best-of-breed routers, servers and firewalls and 24/7 support and maintenance.

You can succeed with the right tools, so choose wisely.

In the following lines, we have jotted down a few points that we noticed during our observation on online sites which are important from the point of view of web designers. Some of them may be taken with a pinch of salt; for it is not possible to please everyone every time. But most of them are simple enough to be used as a rule of thumb.

1. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. A picture file, alas, is also almost as big. Images, no doubt, enhance the look of a page, but it is not advisable to go overboard in stuffing your page with a truckload of images. Most net-surfers use a dial-up connection and the average time to load a page should be no longer than 5 seconds. If it’s longer, the surfer will most probably click away elsewhere. So, within this time, all the images on a page must be loaded as well. So, as a rough yardstick, keep the aggregate page size less than 30k.

Another important point to note is that each file on the page requires a separate HTTP request to the server. So a lot of small images – even if they do not add up to a lot in terms of bytes – will slow down the loading a lot.

Even when you must use images for navigation, please give a second thought to the users who will not be seeing those jazzy, fantastic & truly amazing buttons that you spent hours to design. Yes, we are talking of the ALT text attribute of the IMG tag. Do not forget to provide an Alternate Text for each image that you use for navigation. (It may be left blank for certain images that are purely for aesthetic reasons, but let that be an exception, rather than the rule.) Though not obviously apparent, ALT text can help such users immensely.

Modern browsers offer users a choice to turn off images. This gives an idea of how troublesome the unwanted images could be.

A couple of more attributes that make your pages load faster are the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes. Without these, the browser must wait for the image to download since it cannot know how much space to leave for them!

2. Navigability & functionality come before artistic excellence. It is no use making your site a masterpiece of art if users cannot navigate around it – even after they reach the main page; they have no clue as to how to go where they want to go.

3. Especially common, is a kind of navigation that some people call Mystery Meat Navigation. That means that unless your mouse moves over an image, you have no idea where that link might take you. Only when the mouse hovers do you see the actual link. This is cumbersome because users need to move their mouse all over the place to find out which part is a link and which is not.

4. Follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it simple, stupid!

5. Next is a very important practical suggestion: whenever your whole page is within a TABLE, the page cannot render (i.e., the page does not show on the screen) unless the entire table is downloaded. You might have noticed this on several websites, when there is no activity for a long time, and suddenly the entire page is visible. Hence, to avoid such a situation, what you should do is this: Split the table up into two tables one below the other, and let the top one be a short table that displays just the page header and a few navigation links. So now, immediately upon downloading this part of the page, users can see the page header – and this prepares them for the long wait ahead, as well as keeps them from leaving your site to go to other sites, in case of a slow connection.

6. The ongoing browser wars have left only one casualty – the user. As a word of caution, stay away from all browser-specific functions. Because if a certain feature is supported by one browser, it will most definitely not be supported by another. Where you must use such features, it should not hamper the display of the page in the other browser which does not support such functionality. In other words, your page should degrade gracefully.

7. Creating a new browser window should be the authority of the user only. Do not try to popup new windows to clutter the user’s screen. All links must open in the same window by default. An exception, however, may be made for pages containing a links list. It is convenient in such cases to open links in another window, so that the user can come back to the links page easily. Even in such cases, it is advisable to give the user a prior note that links would open in a new window.

8. Keep in mind the fonts-challenged users too. The ultra-jazzy “Cloister Black MT Light” font that looks so amazing on your machine may well be degraded into plain old Times New Roman on your user’s machine. The reason? He/she does not have the font installed on his/her machine – and one thing’s obvious – there’s nothing you can do about the situation, sitting halfway across the globe from them.

9. Stay clear of out-of-the-way hard-to-find fonts. Use plain vanilla fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Courier. If need be, make your jazzy fonts into an image and put that on the page. (And while you’re there, do not forget Tip #1.)

10. A new design trick that is increasingly being used on the web has caught my fancy: It is a very functional navigation bar that guides you across all possible paths within the site. It looks something like this –  Read More:

It Takes Money to Make Money

If you plan on making any amount of money off of your website then it would be reasonable to expect that it may take some level of initial cash outlay. This is not in all cases, because if you are having a web designed just for fun, or amusement then that should be what takes priority, fun and amusement.

Time is Money On the Internet

The Internet is truly a business horse race and every day that your website is not generating a profit, is a day that you are falling behind.  This mean that you are well advised to seek out the services of experienced web design professionals to assist you with your project. You can choose to learn as you go and do the web design work yourself, but you have to understand that that is going to eat up precious time that you could be making money.

Work With Professionals

Experts in web design have the previous experience that it takes to design and launch a successful website, that is if you select a true professional to do your web design work. This means that you will want to see some previous work that any prospective designer has done before you hand over the job to them.

Dont Let Junior Do the Job

The biggest mistake you can make, is to trust your job to a young relative or neighbor that has recently acquired the necessary software and wants to use you as a guinea pig. Let them practice on simple amateur jobs, that won’t have a negative financial impact on your enterprise rather than your website that you are counting on to make you money.

3. Learning from the mistakes that other social networks have made

As already said, while many social networking sites like myspace, Facebook etc have gained popularity, a few other social networking sites have disappeared in the Internet crowd. As the old saying goes, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” Hence it’s necessary to learn from the mistakes that the other social networks made. One of the biggest mistakes that some of the social networking web designers make is overloading their web page with heavy graphics. They have a misconception that attracting visitors to social networking website depends all on eye candy. Loading a web page with heavy graphics will end up in longer load times. The visitors of your website won’t be patient enough to wait for the page to load. This will make the visitors quit from the page and they never return to your social networking website. Hence make the social networking web design simple and user friendly.  

2. Increase the interactivity of your Social Networking website

With the advancements in online marketing and SEO techniques, driving visitors to your social networking website is easy today. It’s upto the effective social networking web design to make the visitors spend some time in your site and also become returning users. For this, some interactive stuff must be added to the social networking website. Apart from the common social networking features like making friends and exchanging messages some other interactive fun stuff can be added to the social networking website. The social networking softwares come in handy here. There are many social networking software that can be used in your social networking website, which will be fun for the users. They will be pleased to return to your site to use the social networking applications and moreover, they will refer your site to their fiends too.

1. Be unique

Social networking websites are emerging like mushrooms today. At this point, just think in a social networking users point to view. With thousands of social networking websites out there, why should they choose your social networking website? The answer is simple “Make it unique”. Provide the visitors of your social networking website something that the similar networks haven’t offered. Be sure that the unique offerings at your social networks are useful too.

Bottom line

People consider privacy much more important than anything today. Hence it is essential for your social networking web design to ensure the privacy of the visitors of your site.