Visitors can make a decision in as little as 50 milliseconds of arrival on your homepage,
to stay or to click away. Even if they remain, the visual appeal of your site continues
to affect their unconscious impression, and ultimately, helps determine if they establish
a relationship with you – and buy – or just leave.
DON’T:
- Allow the text to expand to the full width of the window if the visitor maximizes.
Have you ever gone to a website and maximized the window, only to find that each line of the content now stretches the entire 14 – 16 – 20 inches across your monitor screen? Once you read across a line that long to the right side of the screen, how easy is it to decide which line is the next one back at the left side? There’s a reason newspaper columns are so narrow. Many websites were created with “fluid” widths a few years ago, when large screens weren’t as prevalent as they are today. Don’t make your visitors have to play with their window size until they find one that’s readable. - Use a Flash doorway page.
Not only do your visitors not want to wait for the page to load, your homepage is the single most important page for search engine optimization. Don’t waste it (and your money) by creating a Flash homepage that adds nothing to your content. - Use a font that is too small.
As the baby boomers age, the number of web visitors who find it difficult to read small print is increasing. Expecting them to use a magnifying glass on their monitor is not a good strategy! - Too much bolding or all caps.
Both of these formats can be used effectively to emphasize and draw the eye to something important on the page. However, when overused, your visitors will feel like you are SCREAMING at them! They won’t know where to look – so they will just leave.
DO:
- Ensure that the page loads quickly.
Web visitors are more impatient than ever, with little tolerance for slow pages. Now there is also some suggestion that Google will soon be adding page load time to its criteria for ranking. Need we say more? - Use a pleasing color scheme.
Computer monitors have improved tremendously with regard to the number of colors that can be displayed; however, there is still no way to ensure that any individual monitor or screen has been calibrated to a standard. Reds in particular can look dramatically different when viewed on different monitors. And there are some colors that just shouldn’t be put right next to each other! If you need help with a color scheme, a graphic artist with experience in web is a valuable resource. - Have sufficient contrast between background and text.
Contrast can make a difference between visitors being able to see your text, or having the text effectively disappear. In addition, there are many types of color blindness that can prevent people from seeing two colors as different shades. Assure your website is accessible by taking a look at the site with all color removed – in grayscale. - Allow adequate space between lines (line height).
When your text is hard to read, your visitors aren’t going to stick around. Since they don’t want to read – they want to scan – make it easy for them by allowing enough space between your lines. Line height will vary depending on the font size. Try using 1.4 or 1.5 times the font size for your line height.
