Amazing Revelation Number One: not everybody uses Windows XP SP2 with Internet Explorer 6, Flash, all cookies automatically accepted, a maximized window on a 1024×768 32-bit screen, and perfect eyesight. Get it? If your site does not render correctly in browsers other than IE, you have lost a significant percentage of your users. Everybody who uses Mozilla FireFox is alienated. Everybody who uses Linux is alienated. “Resize your browser to…” SHUT UP. “Best viewed with…” NO. Ever heard of XHTML? Ever heard of standardized markup? Try obeying the standards. Many people out there are color-blind to a certain extent. That means your site should look good in greyscale. Don’t use Flash, either …

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With all the talk of how to make a great website and ways to keep visitors, it is important to also understand the other side of designing an Internet business. Every day, thousands of websites are finding unique ways to turn away visitors and potential customers. Although many webmasters know about the obvious “turn-offs”, there are many little details that “tick-off” visitors and make them leave …

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About the Author:
Scott J. Patterson designed and promoted his own online store with NO computer experience. To find out how he did it, be sure to check out a FREE COPY of his ebook!

According to a recent study by Stanford University, 46% of Web sales are lost on web sites that lack the critical elements that build value and trust with website visitors. The number one reason the people indicated why they wouldn’t buy from a web site was because it had an unprofessional “look and feel” that lacked credibility and did not “feel” trustworthy …

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WebPagesThatSuck is one of the most controversial sites on the Internet. The two books it spawned, aptly named ‘Web Pages That Suck’ and ‘Son of Web Pages That Suck’ outline usability flaws, design no-nos, and how to create a usable site.Vincent Flanders created Web Pages That Suck to champion his view that we can ‘Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design’.

Go to web Pages That Suck

I’m often asked how slow is too slow for a page to download. And if I provide times (4 seconds, 7 seconds, 10 seconds) someone invariably responds with a comment along the lines of “my page loads slower than that, but we do fine”. My rule of thumb is to build pages that load within 7 seconds on a 56K modem, 10 seconds being the maximum load time.

Gardner research found that 4 seconds was the longest many people would wait for an ecommerce site to load. But what about the most popular pages on the Internet? Stuart Brown did an experiment: Victims of Their Own Success where he evaluated the top 100 sites for page size, load times, and transfer rates. Faster pages seem to be more popular. Even About.com is in there - our home page is too slow.

Go to Who else hates slow sites?