Affordable web design packages are ever increasing in popularity. If you are thinking about going for the DIY web design package as a way of keeping costs down then be aware of a few common errors you can make without a pro web designer to help you.
If your budget is tight and you’re going down the DIY route then take a bit of time to research which affordable web design package is best for you, considering how much bandwidth you will have and the speed of page load at peak times.
1. Hit Counter
There is no need to include a hit counter into your web design. They are totally unnecessary, look ugly and mark you as an amateur. Generally speaking they don’t actually give you accurate visitor numbers anyway.
If you want to record visitor numbers, and I totally recommend that you do, then you can use Google Analytics. This will give you the detailed information you need and it’s free.
In the face of all the facts, some designer still protest and insist on adding a hit counter. I have even heard of some designers hiding the counter so they can see the numbers but the visitor can’t. Well, Google has some pretty strict rules on what can be hidden on a web page.
2. Background Music
Background music will add to the weight of your page (the amount of data that has to travel to display the website) and it adds no value. Visitors are inclined to immediately leave any site that makes a noise they are not expecting.
3. Horizontal Scroll
Horizontal, or side to side, scrolling is best avoided. You can still read a page if you have to scroll up and down but with horizontal scrolling you may well have to scroll back and forth with every line of text. Very annoying!
This does lead you to a discussion of what resolution do you design for?
The smallest resolution that your visitor is likely to have their monitor set to is 600 pixels wide, but if you design to this resolution you are losing a good chunk of the screen width and only s very small number need a page width this small. You will find that over 90% of your visitors will see your web pages perfectly if you set your pixel width to 1024 pixels wide.
4. Slow Loading Pages
If a page takes more than a few seconds to load then your visitors will assume that there is a problem with your site and so will Google for that matter. Your visitors will leave for greener pastures. Google’s search engine algorithm now takes into account page speed. So you need to keep your page as lean as possible so that there is not too much to load.
Page weight and the likely causes of slow loading pages is a tutorial in itself, but flash animation, video, and images can all contribute to slow loading pages.
Some web design packages use low bandwidth servers and if this is the case it’s even more important that your images are properly optimised and there is no more than you need on each page.
5. Advertisements
Generally speaking, smaller businesses are making use of their affordable web design package so that they can promote their business, products and services. If this is you, then allowing adverts on your site is tantamount to suicide.
Paid adverts on your site are going to have a detrimental effect on both your site and on your business. You will have little control on who advertises in the space and on the nature of the advert, so if it’s a large flash file then you are going to suffer from slow page loading.
If you your site is purely content based and your revenue is going to come from advertising then clearly this last section is not aimed at you, but you are far and few between.
