At first, when you design your website, you may have a thousand great design ideas and find yourself (or the Webmaster you are working with) trying to cram all the brilliant design elements into one incredible website package. Stuffing your website full of these elements can create a very busy website that no one will want to visit ever again. If you don’t want your website to be annoying to your viewers (face it- who wants that?), keeping your design, colors and extras to a minimum will keep your viewers at peace while they view your website. You have a much better chance at selling your company’s business online if your don’t bombard your viewers with an over-designed website.

Understand your visitors. When your website is in the process of being designed, pass it off to a few respected colleagues or friends to give you an honest reaction to your site. If you are dead-set on including a flash header on your site, but the graphics have to reload for each page, resulting in frustration and distraction for the viewer, trust your friends’ reaction and take it out. It’s better to reserve your creativity for good content and color scheme choices.

If your web designer (or you, yourself) is new to the game of designing websites, they may feel compelled to impress viewers with all their tech-savvy design elements.

* Keep it simple. Hitting your viewers over the head with your fancy design can alienate your business.
* If you use music on your website, make sure there is an option to click off. Letting people decide for themselves if they want to hear your theme song on repeat will result in happier viewers.
* Don’t scream or whisper on your website. Make sure your font size is appropriate and use large and small text carefully.
* Get rid of pop-up windows. Most browsers eliminate pop-ups to rid you of annoying ads that get in your way. If you include legitimate pop-ups, chances are people are not viewing them anyway.

When you design your website, make sure you do your research and look around online to find sites that are pleasing and effective to look at. Remember, “less is more” and try not to over-design your site and annoy your visitors. You want them to keep coming back. Create a simple design that is enjoyable to view, easy to navigate and represents your company.

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