With literally hundreds of do-it-yourself web design programs on store shelves these days, many small businesses have decided to take on webmastering. Is this a good idea? YES! It's a GREAT idea. Not only can you save big bucks, you can make site changes as often as you like and keep your content fresh. For do-it-yourselfers, these changes cost nothing to implement, except time. But there is a down side. :-( There are far too many webmasters that get carried away with their creativity. Take a little time to surf the web and you'll see exactly what I mean. If you're going to rely on your web site to produce an income, there are many things you can do to help make it profitable. The fact is however, the things you DON'T DO will have even more impact! Below you'll find the top 2 mistakes that these new "small business
webmasters" are making, so YOU can avoid them. Remember, if you're designing your
site for fun, then the sky's the limit as far as crativity goes.
1. MUSIC Has this ever happened to you? You're surfing the web and you follow a link to a site that looks interesting. Just as you cruise into the home page, - BLAST!! - your speakers start blaring the theme to Godfather II! What is your natural reaction? Well if you're like me, it's much easier to hit that "back" button on your browser than it is to fumble around looking for the volume control on your speaker, right? After all, when you set out on your surfin' safari, you were looking for information. If you wanted to listen to "movie theme songs" or "hits from the 70's" you would have rifled through your album collection and fired up your turntable! So why is it that webmasters with otherwise useful web sites feel the need to play their favorite tunes for their web site visitors? Who knows, I guess it's fun for them. But the bottom line is, they're pushing more people away than they realize. Remember the internet marketing basics: If you're selling something, you need people to stick around. After all, getting visitors takes work, why risk losing them before they get a chance to check out your wares! Now don't get me wrong, strategic use of some choice midi or wav files can spice up your web site. The key is to give your visitors a choice of whether they want your sounds or not. Don't force your audio on them. If you're interested in adding sound to your site, here are a couple places for tips and some great sound files: Sound Central
Wav Central
2. GRAPHICS "What? Now you're telling me I should have a site without graphics?" No, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I AM suggesting is that you don't get carried away with your graphics. Keep your
graphics to a bare minimum.
Graphics take time to load. People surfing the web are an impatient lot. They typically
won't wait for images to load if it involves more than 15 seconds. If you must use lots of
graphics, shrink the file size of all your images so they will load faster. This can be
done by visiting Raspberry Hill Publishing Inc.'s GIF Wizard, http://www.raspberryhill.com/gifwizard.html
.
So there you have it. The Top 2 mistakes by this growing army of small biz webmasters. Have you visited YOUR site lately? Has your creativity been driving your prospects to the competition? You might want to take another look.
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