There's probably much more available information on driving traffic than there is on creating a site that will convert it. It goes beyond that, though, because your site needs to make your visitors, first, want to stay there. Of course content is huge, but how your site looks and feels will help determine how much people like being there. It's a harsh decision, your visitors will decide in 3 seconds or less if you're worthy of their attention. That's not much time to put your best foot forward. You know yourself that a website that is a total pain to deal with, and is not visually appealing, will not go far with making people want to stick around. If your site does these things well, then it will help convince your visitors that this site is the one they were looking for. Ok, we'll share some more insights about design that will help you with your visitors.
One of the biggest mistakes webmasters make is not having a fast loading website. There are lots of sites online that take too long to load, which people generally don't have the time to wait for. The best web design tip that anyone can give you in relation to this problem is to make sure you use more text and less graphics. It's just as easy as that. While loud graphics and animations may be alright on the eyes, nothing kills load time more than these when it comes to websites. That's why you'll only want to use graphics if you absolutely have to. Your probably losing half your traffic if your site takes longer than 10 seconds to load. You can make sure your site loads faster by checking its performance using a slow connection, and if it's taking too long just cut down on the graphics.
It's a good idea to avoid being too radical with design, depending on your market. At this point, surfers are accustomed to seeing the usual bookmark buttons, RSS feed buttons, etc on all sites. You want to avoid alienating your visitors because too many things they're used to seeing are not on your site. A lot of these things operate on a person's unconscious mind and it relates to feelings of security.
When designing your site, don't make the mistake of playing music on your website when it loads. That's something from yesteryear - it's just not done anymore. Another caution area concerns audio that starts right away, or video - anything that is not controlled by the visitor. People almost demand to be in control as much as possible, so let them have it - no big deal. Therefore, designing a successful site isn't as difficult as it may sound. Don't overlook the aforementioned ideas and make sure to take care of all the small details. The challenge lies in creating a site that is interesting to visitors, not in designing a simple site.
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