When breaking into website design, there are five rules you need to follow in order to ensure you optimize your website’s performance.

1. Do not use splash pages

Splash pages have no purpose other than to be a pretty introduction to your website. They are pages that usually say nothing more than “welcome” or “enter here” but take a long time to load and contain none of your website’s content. When trying to optimize your website’s performance, it is important to stay away from any superfluous text or images that don’t show a visitor your site’s value.

2. Refrain from banner advertisements

Banner Advertisements appear to be nothing more than a waste of website space. Most visitors have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements anyway, and even those that have not only see banner ads as a desperate attempt to make more money at their expense. Since they are rarely appealing to anyone, it is best to avoid them. Good website design has nothing more than the content it is trying to provide. If you are searching for extra ways to make money with your website, strategically placed affiliate links are much less invasive.

3. Have simple and clear navigation

The navigation menus you use are vital as you optimize your website’s performance. They should be simple and easy to understand, so much so that even a child will be able to use it. Complicated Flash menus or dropdown menus detract from your site’s content. And since these features also make website design more difficult, avoiding them will not only keep visitors from leaving your site, but will also save you time. There is never a good reason to make your site difficult to navigate, no matter how attractive you think it looks.

4. Make it clear which page the visitor is on

If your site has several pages, you may want to ensure that they always know which page they are visiting at that moment. By doing so, you give the visitor their own history, so if they need to navigate to or away from that page, the entire process will be seamless. If your visitors are confused, they may leave your site.

5. Website Design and Audio

Audio can be an annoyance to visitors, especially visitors that are going to be staying on your site for a long time. Audio looping can cause frustrations, and if you are trying to optimize your website’s performance, it is important that you do not have excessive amounts of audio. If you insist on adding audio to your site, make sure the visitor has some control over it, either by changing the volume or providing a mute button that is easy to locate and works immediately. Don’t forget, some of your visitors may be at work, or other public places where the audio can be a tremendous distraction.

Discover more information and resources that will create immediate results, visit Larry’s site at www.elitewebtactics.com.

Copyright 2008 Larry Lang All Rights Reserved. Lang Enterprises Inc. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, www.elitewebtactics.com

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