Here is a basic overview of little things that really bugged me on “professional designers and developers” websites.
Leaving watermarks on images
This is from a real designers website…I haven’t the heart to contact them about it.
Seriously, as soon as a client sees something which has possibly been stolen from another person website, they will just assume you will screw them over and they will avoid you.
No Easy way to contact you
I love seeing a lovely portfolio with some clearly fantastic work, but it sucks when I can’t get a quote. Clients will tend not to bother poking around (or doing a WHOIS) for a way to get in touch.
Make sure you have a big “Contact me for a quote” link somewhere.
No Portfolio
Clients tend to like to see you can do to check that you can actually do what you say. Make sure you have an accessible portfolio of work. If you need to build a portfolio, do some work cheap or even free.
“So are you a company or a guy in his basement”
Be honest with clients, if you’re a one man band, tell them! Clients will not punish you for not being a large corporate company (in fact, most companies will see you as lower cost labour).
Try and make your website reflect the amount of people who you work with. In some cases being a small company (or even a sole trader) can allow you to have a blog, twitter or even be a little more informal.
Invalid Code
If your website does not work in the client’s browser (which will always be IE6, because clients are idiots) it is unlikely the client will think your worth £500 per hour. Make sure you cross browser test and use good CSS (also, advoid tables).
A “Call to Action” is marketing jargon for an action you wish you users to complete, for example “Sign up now” or “Add to cart”. Without them users will be confused about what you want them to exactly do on your website, but too many will frustrate users and possibly confuse them.
Below are some examples of good and bad calls to action.
Facebook
Only 2 calls to action, but the login button fit in seamlessly with the layout (not taking attention away from the sign up, especially for new users). The page also only gives the information required to know what Facebook does, sign up in 1 click and login.
Note: the “Sign Up” button is the only green button on the page (it stands out like a sore thumb).
MySpace
6 Calls to action (too many), the user is somewhat overloaded with information. The tabs are inconsistent and link to unnecessary information.
Amazon
No clear login or sign up button (Seriously Amazon, you make it look like I am logged in but I’m not). However there is only 1 clear call to action (Search).
eBay
3 calls to action, essentially “Search”, “Register” and “login”.
As the title suggests, in this brief study I’m going to try and find out how many words, paragraphs and characters is normal for a web page.
Below is an overview of the results I obtained from a bot I wrote (Which analyses web page content*):
Words Per a page
Characters Per a Page
Paragraphs
Characters per a Word
Words Per a paragraph
BBC News – #1
402.00
2,000.00
10.00
4.98
200.00
BBC News – #2
764.00
3,476.00
17.00
4.55
204.47
BBC News – #3
663.00
3,359.00
34.00
5.07
98.79
LA Times – #1
943.00
4,904.00
30.00
5.20
163.47
LA Times – #2
1,045.00
5,163.00
20.00
4.94
258.15
Yahoo News – #1
524.00
2,565.00
15.00
4.90
171.00
Breitbart.com – #1
319.00
1,576.00
11.00
4.94
143.27
Average (News Sites)
665.71
3,291.86
19.57
4.94
177.02
Mashable – #1
222.00
1,083.00
4.00
4.88
270.75
Mashable – #2
710.00
3,703.00
9.00
5.22
411.44
Average (Blog)
466.00
2,393.00
6.50
5.05
341.10
Wikipedia – #1
5,241.00
28,681.00
45.00
5.47
637.36
Wikipedia – #2
2,757.00
14,415.00
34.00
5.23
423.97
Average (Information)
3,999.00
21,548.00
39.50
5.35
530.66
WMT Post – #1
85.00
342.00
1.00
4.02
342.00
WMT Post – #2
472.00
2,240.00
6.00
4.75
373.33
Average (Forum)
278.50
1,291.00
3.50
4.38
357.67
Average (Overall)
1,204.86
6,296.24
18.85
4.97
296.67
So overall, the average number of words per a page is about 1,200 and the number of letters per a word should average out to roughly 5. However, this number various depending on the web page type and target audience.
*The content analysed excludes navgation, headers and footers.
Between 12pm and 2.30pm Bore Me plays 5 videos back to back, so you can sit back and eat your lunch while having a giggle. However, it only works around lunchtime (unless you change your computers clock). If they added a “It’s not lunch, but show anyway” button it would be a lot better.
Innovation Rating: 3/5
A great idea, design and execution lets it down.
This is from a real designers website…I haven’t the heart to contact them about it.
