When designing your first website, it can be difficult to keep track of everything there is to consider. So, just for a change, we thought we’d look at those things you can forget about – the five elements of web design that can put off customers and mar an otherwise excellent composition.

Multi-sensory sites: Background music on websites gets very irritating very quickly, and can potentially embarrass customers, especially if they are trying to use the web in a crowded or quiet place. If you feel sound will add to your site’s ambience, create an opt-in button so visitors can choose to listen.

Stick to the map: Once you have decided on your navigation system, stick with it. Ensure that your menu is in the same position on each website, so visitors don’t have to waste time re-orientating themselves on every single page.

Don’t be too flash: Flash is brilliant for embedding graphics and animations which can really make your site stand out. The downside is that they are time-consuming to load and won’t catch the eye of search engines. Flash is non-indexable, so while it may look great on the site, it isn’t visible outside, greatly reducing the number of visitors you receive.

Don’t get dressed in public: Under construction sites add nothing to your SEO and frustrate customers looking for answers. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve found the solution to your question, only to click and find out that answer is ‘Come back soon’.

Make sure your content can be read: You’ve spent ages making sure that your site says what you want it to, so make sure it produces the maximum impact by choosing the right font at a readable size.

A major factor in achieving high search rankings is of course relevant inbound linking. Google analyses not only the quantity but the quality and relevance of the inbound links to your site to determine how important a result it is. This method, alongside keyword optimisation techniques has improved the relevance of search results greatly. Though as is the case with many aspects of the web, this system has in recent times been abused.

There are many websites which buy and sell inbound links to sites which disregard link quality and pass page rank, which has allowed the search results to be manipulated. However in 2007 Google made significant efforts to stamp down on this paid linking practice, enforcing penalties in terms of search ranking and page rank passing ability to the sites carrying it out. The result of this ongoing campaign by Google will be felt in 2008 as the websites who have worked to optimise their sites and legitimately gain quality, relevant links will begin to rise in the ranking and the sites which relied on paid links will begin to slip.

Quick Linking Tips

1. A good way to gain relevant links to your site is to get registered in appropriate online directories which are related to your business. Many of these directories request much the same information although have different limits on the number of characters available etc and registering can be a tedious process. An idea is to create a basic “submission kit” text file with brief promotional copy for your site in a few different formats including a one sentence description and 25, 30 and 70 word descriptions containing your keywords aswell as contact details and prewritten hyper links which can be pasted in quickly. A good directory to be on is Google’s Business Listings: http://www.google.com/local/add
2. Try writing informative and interesting articles which relate to your field of expertise and submit them regularly online. There are several quality article and blog sites where you can submit free articles. Be sure to include your necessary keywords in the article and make use of the hyperlinks the sites allow you to put in at the bottom. Use your keywords here aswell to link back to your site. Articles are especially useful for new sites looking to get spidered quickly. A good article submission site is : http://www.ezinearticles.com
3. Yahoo offers a reliable service which analyses which sites are providing inbound links to other sites. To look at this type “link:domain” into Yahoo’s search engine to get an idea who your competitors are being linked to by. This should provide ideas on where to look for acquiring quality inbound links which are relevant to your business. Yahoo’s version of this tool is more accurate than Google’s.