Here is a list of things not to do when having your website built.  This can be helpful information for existing website owners as well as people who do not have a website and are interested in getting one.

Avoid using Flash intros – You know what I’m talking about.  The 15-30 second intro before you actually go into a website.  You may think it’s cool, but you’re visitors won’t.  Even if your visitors do like the intro, they’re only going to watch it once before they click on the Skip Intro link.  Your visitors are on your site to get information as quickly as possible.  How many times have you watched another website’s Flash intro?  I rest my case.

Avoid using background music – You may love the background music on your site, but don’t be so sure that your visitors will have your same tastes.  Also, you want to be courteous to the cubicle workers.  If you really want to have background music on your website (which I wouldn’t recommend), I suggest not having it play automatically.  If you are going to have background music on your site, you should also provide your visitor with a way to turn the background music off. 

Avoid using page counters – We don’t recommend this although we do have websites in portfolio which do have counters on them.  Some of our clients were so adamant about putting a counter on their site that we did so just to keep the peace.  Do you really want to let everybody know how many people are visiting your site?  Install an analytics package on your site, so you can get detailed statistics on your site.  That’s better than any counter.

Avoid using pop-up windows – More than likely your visitors won’t see them anyway due to the fact that most browsers have built in pop-up blockers, and those pop-up windows are just downright annoying.

Avoid using any flashing text or images – People who have seizures may not react to well when they see all of that flashing.  Be courteous to your visitors.

Avoid going against conventional navigation – When you look at television sets, where is the power button?  It’s at the bottom of the television.  Well, for websites, people are used to seeing the navigation menu either at the top of the screen or on the far left.  Sometimes you may see the navigation menu on the far right.  Don’t confuse your visitors by trying to set a trend.

Next week, we’ll talk about some rules which should be followed when having your site designed.

We’re here to wrap it up with our final installment of our Choosing a Domain Name series.  As always, we like to get into the meat of the subject rather quickly.  So, here are more tips!

Stick with .com for businesses and .org for non-profit organizations – Usually people will type in the .com extension, so don’t go getting a .net extension if you don’t have the .com extension.  For example, if your website is widgets.net, and you tell your friends or possible customers the name of your site, chance are that they will go to widgets.com.  If the owners of widgets.com happen to be your competitor, you’ve just lost some business.  Non-profits are synonomous with having a .org extension.  You might ask, “But what if I have a personal website?”  Then go with the .com extension.

Get a unique, fun, and easy to spell name – Think about YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, and Google.com.  These names are easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and easy to remember.  What’s in a name?  Everything.

Register your domain name for multiple years – Doing this will tell the search engines that you mean business and you’re not just a fly by night company who spams folks.  You’re in it for the long haul, aren’t you?

Avoid trademark issues – You don’t want to come up with just the perfect domain name only to find out that you have to give it up because somebody has already trademarked their company name.  Before making the purchase,  you can do a search to see if anybody has trademarked your name here.