Don’t Get Caught in a Website Time Warp
October 7th, 2009 by JeremyTrends in building websites come and go as time progresses, much like changes in clothing and popular culture. At one point in time it was the height of fashion to wear legwarmers and crimp your hair. These trends have changed and so has the Internet. Here are some online trends that were popular in the past that you should avoid. Check your website for these so you can change anything that might not be getting you the right kind of attention. You can contact our customer support team to help you jump into your site and make any changes so that you’re up to date.
Spinning and Animated “Gifs”
A .GIF file or a “gif” is a picture file that compiles several images to create the illusion of motion or animation. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s it was “all the rage” to fill your pages with little moving or flashing icons that represented some sort of call to action. These might be email boxes that spit out letters, spinning “Search the MLS” text, clever images of cartoon people reading maps, etc. These are no longer effective methods of engaging a website visitor. Where you may have used these in the past, replace them with a textual call to action. This will help you add even more content to your website which will help you become more relevant to specific search terms.
Using “Click Here” for your calls to action
When the Internet first became popular, there were a number of users who were not familiar with browsers, exploring the Internet, and navigating between websites. It became common practice to use the phrase “Click Here” for links because it was generally held that people wouldn’t know to click the hyperlink to get more information.
Now there is a whole generation of people who have grown up with the Internet as a part of daily life. People are now familiar with a hyperlink and how it works to pull them to another page with more information. Therefore, you want to make sure that you are using keyword-rich anchor text links to connect people from one page to another and why not to use “click here”.
Over Using Text Colors, Highlights, Formats and Background Colors
When you are attempting to draw attention to a part of your page it can be very easy to go overboard and over utilize extra formatting. IF YOU HIGHLIGHT EVERYTHING NOTHING WILL STAND OUT. But if you use bold, and italicize sparingly you can make certain elements standout from the rest of the text. Underlining is not recommended because web users might think it is a hyperlink.
Making good use of these techniques will help make your content more user friendly, giving your readers an opportunity to pick up on the primary topics of your page. Be sure that you are not over-using color on your page as well. Usability tests indicate that the best use of color is black text on a white background. If you visit the top websites online like Google, Yahoo, Zillow etc, they use simplicity to maximize the readability of their websites. If you feel really strongly about using text colors on your page, make your headings stand out from the main text by bolding or changing the color at that point. Also, keep the contrast as high as possible by avoiding the use of two shades of the same color.
Moving Forward With Your Website
These are all areas of web design that have changed over time. As we understand more about how people use websites, the better job we can do to provide our visitors with the best user experience. These modifications can keep your visitors on your site, and help them stick around to become clients.
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