It's easy to get carried away with what you'd like your website to do, but ultimately you need to think about what your customers would like it to do. They are the one's you've made the website for after all.

Based on feedback from our clients, and from our clients clients, we have made a list of essential do's and dont's for your website. Remember, your website is for your customers and potential customers - so to make your website as effective as possible your site should be designed with them in mind.

• DO'S
  • Enable the text on your pages to be resized
  • Name  your links and pages carefully to avoid confusion
  • Ensure non page content (such as pdf and media files) open in a new window and that these files are clearly shown to be not standard web pages (for example by using an acrobat icon)
  • Use clear standard fonts
  • Make clickable links obviously clickable
  • Make link that have been visited a different colour to those which have not
  • Make company info and contact details obvious and easy to find
  • Make navigation simple, intuative and standard
  • Ensure content is regularly updated without typos, missing links and missing images
  • Make text "for the web". Short, precise, well paragraphed, and easy to scan and read
• DONT'S
  • Open links in a new window unless they link to media files or pages outside of the website (external links)
  • Make people fill in form fields that they shouldn't have to.
  • Use technologies that may not be installed on the users PC
  • Use too much movement on your pages (thankfully the days of the flash intro seem to have disapeared)
  • Use the term "click here" or other non descript terms. Naming links appropriately will also help search engine optimization
  • Purposefully omit prices from your site
  • Have pages that scroll horizontally
  • Collect Email addresses without a privacy policy