The pitfalls of website design are many. The number of bad sites outnumber the good ones by a vast margin, so the challenge for professional website designers is to keep their "eye on the ball" and avoid some common snares. The following are a just a few things to keep in mind for your next design.

• Make it quick. Websites need to load quickly. You have about three seconds to keep a visitor from leaving a website and going someplace else for what he or she wants. If they are twiddling their thumbs while waiting for your home page to show up, their next move might be to their mouse to click on the "Back" button to return to their search results page. There are software and online tools that will help you see how quickly your pages load at different speeds.
  
  
• If you're not selling music, don't use it on your site. It's mostly annoying and you probably don't have the legal right to use it anyway. Almost all music is copyrighted, and in case you don't remember NAPSTER, the music people are beginning to get pretty nasty about people stealing their property, whether it's being downloaded or played as background for a website. You don't want to mess with the ASCAP, BMI, or other corporate lawyers.
  
  
• Don't "borrow" pictures from other websites. Unless you are positive that you are using a graphic or picture that is in the public domain, don't use it.
  
  
• Make your site easy to navigate, easy to find information on, and informative. Frustrating the visitors is a bad idea.
  
  
• It's okay to be influenced by other good websites, just don't borrow too heavily from them. Take a great idea and make it better; give it your own distinctive look. Be creative without directly copying and you will end up with something to be proud of.
  
  
• Design website that are viewable by as many people as possible. Keep in mind that Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used by most people, but not by everyone. There's Netscape, AOL, Opera, and, oh yeah, Web TV. And not everyone's running the latest version. There is a point of diminishing returns (back past Internet Explorer 4 is a good cutoff), and you have to decide where that is. Just remember, if they can't view the site the way you want them to, it probably won't do much good to have done all that great work. You can check web logs to see what browsers and operating systems people are using that visit your website.
  
  
• Use "Web Safe Colors" to be sure that the colors look as close to the same as possible. Different browsers and different monitors can make that special color you mixed up on your color palette come out looking very interesting.
  
  
• Decide whether to use "fluid" or "fixed width" design. Fluid design allows the page to fill out whatever width is available to it within the window. Fixed width keeps the content looking the same no matter what size the window is or what resolution is set for the monitor. There are valid reasons to use either one.
  
  
• Don't use "cookie cutter" templates. If your site looks like everyone else's or your designs all look the same, you'll start to lose business. Standardized templates are a very bad idea.
  
  
• Mission Statements are way overused. The problem is they all say "We're dedicated to going a good job for everyone and you'll be happy you chose us." How boring! If you don't have something truly unique and attention grabbing, don't waste the bandwidth.

That's not all there is by a long shot. Books have been written about this subject, and there's much more to say on each of the subjects above.

Here's hoping you keep your "eye on the ball" and keep on designing great websites.

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Thanks for reading! We'll bring you more tips and news next week!

Ed Cottrell, Editor & President