by David Lim
It is not easy to get a visitor to your website. You have got to fight tooth and nail with thousands of other sites for that visitor. For whatever reason, the visitor clicked the link, or typed in a url, and is now your web visitor.
Now that the visitor has done her job, your job begins. Your job is to keep that visitor engaged and on your site for as long as is humanly possible. Remember that the "back" button is always just one click away.
Great Content
I know you are sick of hearing it but I will say it again, "Content is king". Your visitor came to your site for information, and will only stay on your site as long as she believes she can get what she wants or needs, and not a second more.
So try your level best to inform, educate or entertain, as the case may be.
Flash Animation or Video
You visit the home page of a site only to be greeted by a flash animation that is taking too long to load, and does not have a button for you to skip to the main site. Guess what you are going to do? Yep, you will click the "back" button and go visit another better site.
Unless you have a good reason to include the animation or video, I would suggest not to put it in. But if you really have to, make sure that it is reasonably small so that it will load fast, and it has a "Skip Intro" button so that the visitor can skip to the main page directly if she wants to.
Background Music
If you put in background music on your web page, do include a button to mute the music if the visitor so desires. And do make it intelligent enough so that when she navigates to the next page, the music will continue playing and not start again at the beginning.
Navigation
I know it's boring to have a menu at the top or the left hand side or at a consistent place on every web page. Every website does that and you want to be unique. But, from the visitor's point of view, that's ideal. She already knows how to navigate your site if you follow the standard. Your visitor comes to your site for content, and while she may appreciate a little uniqueness in site design, she will be history if she can't get to where she wants to go easily.
And if your site is quite a big one, including a site map and/or a search engine would be a good idea.
Spelling and Grammar
Perfect spelling or grammar is not required. What I mean is that what you are writing is not going to be graded by your English teacher so you are allowed to be creative. You can use words like "gonna", "ain't" and "wanna" if it endears you to your visitor. You can even invent a few new words if it feels right. Start a sentence with "because" if it sounds better. Or use local slang if it's appropriate for your visitor.
In other words, make the visitor feel at home and identify with you. Make it feel like it is a friend talking to her, and not just some words on a computer screen.
But no broken English or spelling mistakes please. Nothing turns a visitor off more than a page full of spelling and grammatical errors that a 10 year old would not make.
Text
Unless your site is about graphics, it's probably best to stick to the tried and tested, that is, white background with dark letters. Above all, make sure that the text can be easily read.
Popup
A visitor goes to your site to visit your site, and she definitely does not want a screen popping up in her face telling her that she is the 1,000,000th visitor and that she has won a prize. Or a popunder that freezes the browser for a few seconds while it loads. Or a full screen popup that has no close button. Or a popup that appears every time you navigate to a new page. Or....
You get the picture. Popups are not a good idea. Don't put them on your site.
But if you really have to put popups on your site, make sure they follow the rules:
The visitor will only see a maximum of one popup per visit.
It must not freeze the browser when loading.
It must not have audio.
The popup must not be full screen.
The popup must have a easily visible close button.
Content of the popup must be for general audiences only, no porn or anything of that sort.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, your website is not about you but your visitor. It is not important how good you think your site is but what is important is how good your visitor thinks your site is.
The best advice I can give you is to look at your site from the point of view of your visitor. Try to think like a visitor and see what she sees. Once you can do that, and start giving your visitor what she wants, I'm sure that your visitor will remain engaged and stay on your site for a very long time.
David Lim is the webmaster of http://QuittingYourJob.com, a business resource for the entrepreneur looking to start, or grow an online home-based business.
This article may be reprinted freely, provided no changes are made, and provided the resource box above follows the article.