Basic Web Site Errors

The faults with web sites fall into three categories bad planning, bad design and poor operation. Creating and running a web site is a little like driving, there are certain rules and good practices that must be followed to successfully get from A to B this article examines some of them.

Bad Planning

Most Basic Errors occur from not carefully considering the seven steps to a successful web site. These are covered in more detail in seperate articles on this site and are:

Choosing the right designer
Getting correct concept and planning
Using the right web hosting plan for your requirements
Integrating your Internet technology into your business processes
Having a comprehensive marketing policy covering all media
Registering with the correct search engines
Keeping your site up to date with a maintenance plan

A web site is an integral part of your business as such you must plan how it will integrate into your existing marketing and customer relationship management strategies.

Bad Design

We have all seen visually appealing sites, and also some that really bad, but the design problems do not end there!

Web Sites are a delicate fusion of graphic design, content and technology. A good web site has the correct balance in all three areas. Sometimes a site can have an atrocious visual appearance but be increadibly popular based upon the content, and vice versa.

The two worst design faults are slow web sites and poor navigation through the site.

Slow web sites are normally caused by a bad choice of web hosting supplier and, or excessive and badly optimised graphics. It is no use having the best visual site if it takes too long to load, people will not wait but move on to your competition's sites.

There is no excuse for poor navigation. Sometimes a site is so large that it cannot have all it's pages accessed from the navigation buttons. Alternatives can be supplied, via a series of drop down menus, a local search engine, or other design features. If your potential clients cannot find the information they want they will go to your competition.

Poor Operation

The Internet is based on near instant access to information. The beauty of the web is that you do not have to wait for one or two days for a brochure to arrive in the post.

The drawback to this is that Internet users expect a much more responsive service. To implement this level of service you need to have a policy of reading and responding to emails promptly. Do not process your emails once a day, either have a staff member constantly monitoring incoming communications, or check at least 4 times a day.

Likewise if you have or are planning an online store ensure that you take online payments via credit card, but also have the capabilities to receive manual payment.

A web site also needs to contain current content and be updated regularly. There is no point in displaying product prices that are out of date. You would not consider advertising old prices in a magazine so why should the web be different.