I’m sure a lot of people would agree that websites are the new media. Gone are the days of radio plugins and TV commercials. So okay, not so much, but you got to admit that if you want to catch the attention of the mass public these days, the best way to do it is to invest on a couple of ads on Yahoo! or Facebook. A Super Bowl ad costs millions and you’re only reaching the die-hard football fans.

A website, on the other hand, costs much less and is ten times more effective, if used wisely. The thing with websites is that they are a make or break strategy. If you can pull it off right, you could be the next Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s youngest millionaires. But if you end up designing your website the wrong way as to not attract more traffic than the effort and time you invested in building it, then there’s no way your business venture is going to have a happy ending.

So make sure you’re making the right decisions when it comes to designing your website as early as NOW.

Here are 3 ways to make your website look like it’s the work of an amateur:

1. Make website links indistinguishable
The internet is called the World Wide Web because it is a community of independent websites connected through links. A professional web designer, when designing a website, has one thing and only one thing in mind – to make sure links are distinguishable and presented in a way that visitors would want to click them.

Some statistics: 99% of websites have links that are underlined, or colored blue, or both. There’s no mistake these words or phrases are dying to be clicked. In the words of the famous internet meme, if the links in your website are neither, you’re doing it wrong.

2. Underline words or phrases that aren’t links
To repeat the previous statistic, 99% of websites underline their links. This means visitors generally accept an underlined word as a link, and would proceed to click on it, only to find out that it isn’t, including the hundreds of other underlined words in your website. It can be frustrating, no?

As a general rule, don’t underline a word or a phrase if it isn’t a link. Bold it or italicize it, but don’t underline it.

3. Hide your contact information
You want visitors to contact you as soon as possible. You want to be able to talk to them personally or over the phone so you could make a better pitch. So why hide your contact information?

Your contact information should be visible at the top and bottom of every page – name, office/mobile phone number, email address included. Don’t make it look like you’re playing “Find the Easter Bunny” with visitors by dumping your contact details in some obscure page at the back of the website.

I repeat: DO NOT follow these examples unless you want your business to lose money fast. Find success by doing the opposite: make your links distinguishable and easy to read, be accessible to your visitors, and make your website seem like it is the work of a true professional.

Author Bio: Calgary Web Design is a great resource of up-to-date web design strategies and techniques for service professionals and small business owners in the Calgary area. Feel free to visit the website at Web Design Calgary for more info on consultation services. Or you can simply visit the website simply for more related articles on web design.

Category: Internet
Keywords: calgary web design, web design calgary