or not – Suzy gets to rant today!

Since I am trying to keep the negative thoughts away and instead spend precious time with my daughter, I’ve decided to let Suzy Malloy have the space today.

There’s nothing bugging me today!
Merry Christmas

A rant about poor website design

By Suzy Molloy

I’ve been comparing sales pages, sign up and squeeze pages recently.

Whilst there are some great quality designs out there nothing screams amateur as much as:

**poorly designed websites. You know the type, they load half off screen, or use blue text on a black background

**improper use of flash (Oh look I’ve just done my primary school flash animation project so I’ll include it here)

**pixelated graphics. Grainy and out of focus looking like they were stolen from newspapers.

**Images and graphics which don’t match or relate to the text copy. Don’t type “click the box that says BUY ME and then include a box graphic which says ADD TO CART”

My tips to better website page design:

**Proper use of white-space and use of dot points to highlight features makes it much easier to read.

**Properly formatted headings and subtitles. No meta-tags, or a page which says title instead of naming the page, not only looks unprofessional but you are wasting an important SEO opportunity here.

**Attention to detail – Proof read for errors and try your site in a variety of browser types.

Seriously plain text websites can look more professional than using the wrong graphics and images. I don’t want to get started here but just because you found an image online does not mean that it is free for you to use. Double check usage rights, copyright and keep yourself on the right side of the law.

I recommend you use a template for a design starting point. Even seasoned marketers and web designers make use of the good ones.

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