The Creative Design Blog

Top 5 Bad Website Design Ideas to avoid if you are new to the online marketing game. And if you are not so new to the business you should avoid them too. Think of your favorite websites and pattern your website after your favorites. Here are some things not to do.

The first tip is to limit the website colors. This is not the movie Speed Racer. Do not overwhelm your website visitor with all of the colors of the rainbow. Keep it basic. Three colors work fine. And keep the colors easy on the eye. Like our teachers said blue or black ink. No cherry red or bright lime please.

Second, if you do not have a way to capture your visitor’s contact information you are missing a great opportunity. You might have the most interesting compelling website around but chances are your visitor will not be back. Even if he or she book marks your site, it might be a long time if they ever come back. There are simply too many other websites to visit.

Have a screen capture page where people can enter their email adress, and home address if you can get it. Although do not make the home address a required field in the submit box. If you get it great, but make sure you get the email address. And always ask for their primary email address. People have throw away email addresses and you do not want your messages ending up there. Then set up your auto responder to contact them and invite them back to your website. Of course you want them to have a reason to come back.

Third, you must assume that all of your visitors still surf the web using dial up. If you have large graphic files that take all day to download your visitors will leave in frustration. Make sure your website loads quickly. Keep the size of your graphic files to a bear minimum.

Fourth, remember to include the legal information on the bottom of your home page. This information addresses spam laws and your agreement not to knowingly collect contact information from minors. You can even add disclaimers to your website to limit your liability. You want to have information in the about us area if your website is part of your corporation or LLC. There are many tutorials about how to set up the legal part of your website. No need to get scared when you hear the word legal. But many website owners ignore or choose not to have the legal information on their website. And many never have a problem. But it is best to know what you need to have on your website to cover yourself legally than live in blissful ignorance hoping you will never need it.

Fifth, if you have links on your website which lead to other websites, use anchor links. These links open in another window so your visitor does not leave your site by clicking a link on your site. You do not want to your visitor to forget what site he or she was on and never come back to your website.

Keep you website basic. It is the content that sells on your website not all the bells and whistles. And have the basics on your home page. And use anchor links. These top 5 bad website design ideas that lose you visitors are easily avoided.

Dhruv Patel is a happy DreamHost customer. He has a web site to promote DreamHost. Use the dreamhost coupon to get a discount at DreamHost sign up.