I have been getting a lot of evaluation requests for SEO. What I have been noticing is that a lot of sites have very poor designing. Even if we did optimize the site and traffic came in for targeted phrases, conversion would be low.
The way a site looks and functions is very important. I have even had sites who had fairly good rankings for their keywords and yet their conversions were low. The reason was, the layout was so 1980′s. It had that, do it yourself look to it. The pages were very long and the colors were dull at best.
I have also seen sites that are very poorly made. A lot of people find the cheapest designer to create a site. When I see these sites a lot of them have long urls, long load times and poor usability. If you really want to have an online business, do it right the first time. Sometimes, correcting problems can cost more than the creation. Then, you still need to promote.
Have you ever made these mistakes? Are you making them now?
#1 by SierraAudioVideo on August 10, 2006 - 10:35 pm
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As a semi-retired web designer, I understand this problem of designers just “getting it to look good on screen” without taking into consideration the effect that has on the accessibilty, useability, and internet-friendliness of the site. The fact is that being a web designer, at least a good one, means that you need to be a jack of all trades; you need to know the ways in which technologies interact with other technologies and the ways in which humans interact with the technologies. The company I used to work for has the same website since 1997. I kid you not. It’s a disgusting mess of old FrontPage code and a ton of litter-code from almost a decade of copy and paste. But the lady that “administers” it is a partial owner and won’t give it up to anyone else. Their rankings have always been low (because of a multitude of reasons from table-based design to miss-use of code) which I was thankful for because it was an embarrassment! I think I need to write an article about this – as I feel quite strongly on this topic.
#2 by Mr SEO on August 10, 2006 - 10:40 pm
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That sounds like a good idea. If you do write it let me know. I might post it here. Go for it.