There are a lot of bad Web sites out there, Here are some of the common mistakes that we can help you avoid.

• A site that screams, "Buy! Buy! Buy!"
• A site that is hard to navigate
• A site that is too "busy"
• Pages that take too long to load
• A site that is amateurish
• Testing on only one browser

You might want a Web site for the purpose of selling something, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some sites come out pushy because selling is the number one item on the minds of the companies that created them. But look at it from your potential customer's point of view. More often then not, someone is going to your site to find out information first, and if all they see is "Buy, Buy, Buy," it is about the same level of turn-off as a high-pressure used car salesman who won't leave them alone so they can look around.

A bit of subtlety is in order. Provide the information they are looking for, and make it easy for customers to buy your product if they choose to, but do not ram it down their throats. If you do, they will likely find another site that leaves them in peace.

If customers are going to your site for information, it makes sense that they should be able to find it easily. Although a Search option helps tremendously — and is essential for large sites with a vast number of products — visitors should not have to rely on that to uncover basic information. Sites that are hard to navigate may well send visitors off to find another one that is less frustrating.

Information should be arranged logically, and accessible with few clicks from the main page. Furthermore, pages should be cross-linked so visitors can get from one to another without having to go all the back to the beginning and starting over.

Here is an example of not being able to find something. Netscape has a generally excellent, professional Web site. On that site is an reference of JavaScript syntax. Our challenge: go to www.netscape.com and find it! If you give up, go here.

Different type faces, colors, graphics, and animation, when done properly, add to the interest and impact of a Web page. But overdoing it makes the page confusing and distracts from the content. Click here for an example of one that is too busy. Actually, it shows almost every mistake in the book. Unfortunately, there are really Web sites like this.

If pages take too long to load, users might give up and go somewhere else. The biggest culprit here are images, which are usually much larger in terms of the amount of data transfered to the browser than the text around them. Also, complicated or inefficient client-side scripting can make a page slow to load. Experienced Web designers understand these and other issues to help a page load quickly.

A site appears amateurish when the designer does not know enough about HTML or graphics design to assemble the page in a visually pleasing manner. As far as the information goes, there is nothing wrong with this, but we are a society accustomed to visual impact, and its absence does not reflect well on a business.

Click here to see how this site could have looked.

It is important to know that different browser do not display a Web page the same way. Even worse, they have different rules for interpreting client-side scripting. A Web site may perform perfectly well with the browser with which it was developed, but may have an unacceptable appearance or not function at all with different browsers.

DuaneWeb develops Web sites using Mozilla because we believe it most closely adheres to the Web standards set forth by the World-Wide Web Consortium However, we test those sites using different versions of popular browsers, including Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Opera. We also make extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets to guarantee a uniform appearance across different browsers.