One of the common topics important in selling anything is how to make a product more appealing and sellable. We go on and on about cleanliness and presentation, etc. Why is it so important? Buyers often have many options. They can go anywhere to make a purchase. It is key that a service or product have a professional or appropriate appearance.

The same applies to web design. People go to the internet looking for content. That's all they want is content, whether it be contact information or housing information or articles about real estate. Even so, the best content with a horrible presentation will not sell a person into staying on your site or contacting you, just like a great house with graffiti on the walls and dead bugs on the floor will repell a potential buyer if there are other better options out there.

When it comes to web design there are tons of great options (other professional web sites) out there in almost every market. If a person comes looking, your site pops up in the search engine and they click on your site, what are they going to get? Are they going to think, "Wow! I can trust this content, why go anywhere else?" or are they going to think, "How can this guy call himself a professional?" You will convert more if your site presents well.

Other factors will also repell or attract users/clients. Great navigation, easy-to-find tools, a little bit of advanced technology, quick page load times, etc. will have an overall affect on your users.

The goal in web design is to present your content professionally according to THEIR preferences, not yours. You'll need to find your target market, find out what they like, and design to that end.

Website Appearance and Design

That said, many people believe they need a web site. They want to come to work with hundreds of leads or sales sitting in their inbox every morning. Truth of the matter: if you're not in the top 10-15 search results for desired top key words and phrases in your market you will have a negative ROI on your web site project.

Say you pay a company enough or you are experienced enough to achieve great search results. Many sites are too purely designed to convert a lead. Our goal is not to discourage you from embarking on a web project but to do it correctly so you won't lose time and money building something that doesn't generate results.

To be blunt, most sites don't work unless you are very dedicated to them. The goal of this blog is to provide some resources to help you create great web solutions.

Web design should be kept simple. A simple design is appealing and promotes easy to find content. Poor design turns users off immediately and drives them away. Here are some design elements to avoid:

• Anything that Blinks - Some designers want to draw attention to a certain element so they add a blinking graphic. Blinking text or images may work for the first 2 seconds because they draw the eye to something special but then they start working against the site because they quickly become annoying. Go to MySpace and log in. The ads they have are obnoxious and you can only be there for a short period of time.
• Paper-plate picnic - When attending a picnic or bar-b-que when growing up I was peeved by migrating food. It was upsetting when my jello got all over my roast beef and when potatos got on my dessert. When I wanted to eat something I wanted only that something. I loved compartmentalized plates! Users are the same. When they look at your site they need to see organization so they know what to digest with their eyes. Organize your page elements into intuitive areas and stick to these areas. Some sites have all sorts of topics, graphics, content, etc. on the home page. They are trying to feed their users everything at once and it doesn't taste as good.
• Rainbow pallet - pick some colors and stick with them. Find colors for the background and matching colors for the text. Find a color that really stands out to accent certain things. Don't color every element, title, and content area a different color. Unless your users love rainbow bright they will be turned off. Find a group of Colors and then religiously stick to them
• Alphabit soup - don't go crazy with fonts and font sizes. Choose one or two fonts and corresponding sizes and stick to them. Make your reading as easy as possible so people will stay there.
• Glamour Shots - Most professional sites have an professional photo because the professional is trying to market themself. That's great. Make sure the photo is current and not over the top. We have an professional in our office who has a 25 year old photo on her business cards and she's wearing a feather boa. She generates more laughs with that card than business. You can't tell that she is the same person if you see her in person. Don't let your site draw too many laughs. Make sure your pics are professional.
• Dog whistles - Make sure your site content is relevant to what your user is looking for. I am surprised by how many professionals champion their other causes with their professional web site. It's cool to talk about preferences and organizations but it is quite another thing to dedicate the whole site to something other than real estate. Set up another site dedicated to dog whistles and link to it.
• Frames - Frames are easy to use for designers because you set up one navigation area and point all the links to the frame. Don't use frames. Search engines often miss content because they get tangled up in the frames. Users also find them complicated. If a search engine indexes a page that usually pops up in a frame what happens to the navigation? It disappears. Now the user can only see that page. Also, when you click on certain links a browser may confuse which window it should come up in. I've seen links in the same list of items pop up in the same frame, a new window, and overtake the whole window. Users hate getting taken for a ride as they try to navigate your site. The whole page should switch out nearly always with rare exception. (Article: http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/frames.htm)
• Splash pages - A few years ago splash pages were a big deal. Designers would make the home page a graphic page with little to no content. The only navigation would be an "Enter Here" button. These pages are worthless. Search engines hate them because engines only care about content. Users hate them because they have to make an extra action to get to what they want - content. The home page should be content rich and have great navigation.
• Flash - Sites that are all flash may be catchy but search engines don't care about catchy. They want content and they can't read Adobe Flash. Use flash sparingly. It also bugs users who have to wait for it to download.
• Sounds - Don't add beeps, buzzes, boinks, or any other sounds to buttons or mouseovers. The first time a user hears the sound it may be amusing. After that it gets annoying quickly. The only time sound is acceptable is if you choose a classy song or set of songs to play in the background while a user views the site. Make very sure they can turn it off easily or they might get turned off.
• HTML Borders - The standard gray html borders along with many other borders suggest an amatuer site. There are way to many great borders and content wrappers out there.
• Justification - Left justify most body text. Only center titles or short blurbs.

This list will continue as I run into more taboo elements. We will get into some great options for good design. For now, stick to classy design and you'll be set.

AskSomeGeeks chooses to take on projects that are interesting where there is a real challenge or problem to be solved as well as a budget to support the project's success. We take on projects that generate real business, whether it be online product sales, the promotion of a service or general company information. We believe a project must be supported by accurate reporting as well as administrative tools. In many cases, we believe needed solutions are simple enough for a "do-it-yourself" effort. We have built a library of articles and tips as resources for passers-through.

Our skilled design and development staff has created multi-million dollar producing web applications, lead generating brokerage sites, cost-saving technical support solutions, corporate brochures, entertainment interactive presentations, mobile applications, social networks, and many other profitable solutions. Our crew has constructed award-winning web sites and applications.

Our team develops in the large and most innovative of platforms. We use development technologies including: databases, object oriented coding platforms, Adobe's suite of presentation tools, video, etc. We make use of open source as well as enterprise solutions. We are flexible and expert in platform consultation.

We employ rigorous lifecycle development processes to properly analyze, plan, design, develop, deploy, and support accurate custom solutions. We believe process coupled with creativity, produces a the right solutions for our clients.We believe the user/visitor is king and we design to that end.

We believe in web standards and leveraging existing web tools to promote a project to success. We design for search engine optimized pages and user-focused interfaces.

Please feel free to contact us to build your custom solution or visit our library for answers on do-it-yourself projects.