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Before I get into the 7 website design mistakes you should avoid I need to let you know about an important principal that you need to understand first…

According to recent studies 79% of web users scan rather than read webpages.

When you’re visiting websites do you read almost every word? I’m willing to bet that you don’t. If you’re anything like me you most likely scan and look for words, phrases or images that catch your attention then decide if you want to go any further.

Why do we scan?

Let’s face it reading from a computer screen is tiring for the eyes and makes you read at least 25% slower than reading from paper. So it’s no wonder people attempt to minimize the number of words and resort to scanning pages.

Not only this but web use is motivated by the desire to same time, so as a result we tend to act a lot like sharks (keep moving or die). We just don’t have the time to read through every page we’re presented with and we know we don’t need to read everything there is.

When we’re surfing around we’re only interested in a fraction of what’s on the page, the bits that match our interests …and scanning is how it’s done.

So why am I talking about this?

The fact is understanding how someone scans your web pages plays a huge role in the designing of your website, even the layout of a sales letter on a direct response website needs to be carefully considered.

Look at it like this… in 3 seconds can people pick out the key bits of information they need to decide if the website you’ve designed matches their interest?

Here’s what I mean…

This is how a designer builds a webpage:

Here’s how a user interested in the subject of “website design” sees the page:

Are you applying this principal of “scanning” to your own website design?

If the Amazon example of website design above is how it should be done what shouldn’t you do?

Here’s a list of 7 things to avoid (at all cost!) when designing your direct response website…

1. Avoid placing lots of unrelated banner ads on your pages. Not only does this make your website look “tacky” it also makes it harder for people to decide what your site is all about. This is the quickest way to lose traffic and credibility.

2. Avoid large chunks of text all formatted in the same size and same weight.

Break up your text into small easy to scan chunks of information. Make certain words and phrases bold and italic to help guide people’s eyes around your text.

3. Avoid making your design more complicated than it needs to be by giving your website visitor more than 1 or 2 choices on things you want them to do.

4. Avoid having a “Welcome to my website” headline, often this is what people read first as it’s usually the biggest text on the page.

You simply MUST have a headline there that contains benefit orientated keywords and phrases your visitors will recognize, this helps them decide if your website is what they’re interested in.

5. Avoid using more than 3 main colors in your web page design (too many colors make the page look confusing and a visual mess).

6. Avoid having more than 1 focal point on your web page, if you have too many things competing for attention your visitors will not know what to scan first.

7. Avoid making your website more complicated than it needs to be. Simplicity sells because when it’s easier for people to understand your websites offer the better your results will be.

Break your website design into small chunks of information, imagine each “chunk” as the first thing people see on your site, will they understand what you’re offering?

Use the Amazon page as an example of this “chunking” of information into easy to scan parts.

Here’s an example of an easy to scan direct response website.

Take a look at your own website design right now and ask yourself how easy is your website to scan. Does it avoid all 7 of the design mistakes I’ve outlined above?

Let me know how you get on, if you’d like a quick review of your website design just let me know by posting a reply to this post.

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