A Website House Of Horrors

Sure, Halloween may be nearing, but your website doesn’t need to be a house of horrors. Whether you’re marketing plastic surgeons or any other business on the Internet, the purpose is to attract visitors to your site, not scare them away. The following are some of the most common scary’ website elements that are best avoided:

• Page Not Found. Broken or dead links are a surefire way to send visitors packing and, as such, they can do a lot of damage to your website’s success. Make sure to regularly check your links to ensure that they’re working properly and quickly fix any that aren’t. Because errors aren’t entirely avoidable all the time, consider creating your own error page that points visitors to your homepage and gives them other important information.
• Under Construction. While you may not always be able to avoid those error messages, that page under construction’ message is one that you can. Aside from the fact that that little animated construction worker with the jack hammer is very annoying, you’re simply wasting your visitors’ time and trying their patience. If a page on your website isn’t ready yet, don’t put it up. Instead, wait until it’s finished and you have something to offer. If there’s something that you’re working on that you feel is very important, tell your visitors that on your homepage.
• Pop-Ups. Pop-ups are just plain annoying, especially when they’re used for advertising and when they occur one right after the other. There are very few legitimate reasons why pop-ups would need to be used when marketing plastic surgeons. While it’s best not to use them at all, if you feel that they must be used be sure to use them wisely.
• Black, Patterned Or Otherwise Annoying Backgrounds. Choose your background color carefully. Black, patterned and neon backgrounds can make your site look unprofessional and they often making reading more difficult. The best choice is a light background, such as white, combined with a dark text, such as black.
• Unreadable Text. Above all else, your text should allow for easy reading. As such, make sure that you use a common font type and a size that is neither too small nor too large. You can highlight main headings by using a slightly larger size and bolding the text. A dark text set against a light background is the easiest to read.
• Large Images. Overly large images can greatly increase a page’s load time. Make sure that your images are optimized, use them wisely, and don’t overdo it. Avoid background images and too many moving images.
• Splash Pages. If people want to visit your site, that’s a good thing so don’t discourage them. Splash pages tend to do just that and are best avoided.
• Scrolling. Never, ever make visitors scroll horizontally on your pages, and try to minimize vertical scrolling. Overly long pages can be discouraging for users and they may simply give up and go elsewhere. If you have a page with a great deal of content, break it up into multiple pages.