Starting a web site project, you have great designing options. The opportunity seems limitless. But it is ironic that as the potential ideas ahead of you grow, the mistakes you may make become too common, as well.

In the following post, we have presented several web site recommendations that can be useful for commercial web sites, but t can easily be applied to personal and entertaining web sites. It’s essential to avoid these mistakes at all costs.

• About Us: Every Web site should be very clear about its purpose. It’s important to provide brief information about you and your web site significance on the home page of your Web site. The resume can be link to a sub-page named About Us where you can publish more descriptive text. It’s useful to facilitate the navigation because many users may experience difficulties in finding the information they need. You’d better provide more information about your services and products risking that users find these details unnecessary than lose a clients because he or she can not find the required information. After all, a good experience with a Web site that is not useful is more likely to get you customers by word of mouth than a Web site that is intentionally obscure and difficult to understand.


• Alt and title Text: Ensure you make use of the alt and title attributes for every XHTML tag on your Web site that supports them. This information is of critical importance for accessibility when the Web site is visited using browsers that do not support images, and when more information than the main content might otherwise be needed. The most commonly important reason for this is accessibility for the disabled, such as blind visitors who use screen readers to surf the Web. Do not flood your visitors with paragraph after paragraph of useless, vague information in numerous pop-up messages; just make it as accessible as possible. The purpose of alt and title tags is, in general, to enhance accessibility.


• Archive URLs: Very often, Web sites change their URLs (Web addresses) of pages when they are outdated and move off the main page, into archives. This can make it extremely difficult for the search engines because the links that lead to your web page will be broken. When developing a Web site, you should ensure you do so in a manner that allows you to move content into archives without having to change the URL. You won’t be able to popularize your web site if you your page URLs change every few days.


• Content Dates: Updating your web site content you’ll encourage your visitors to return. People will come back only if they’re convinced that there will be something new to see. This content needs to be dated, so that your web site's visitors know what is new and in what order it appeared. Even in the rare case that Web site content does not change regularly, it will almost certainly change from time to time -- if only because a page needs to be edited now and then to reflect changing information. Help your readers determine what information is new in a text by using "last modified on" in small font under the each page content. These regular updates will help both you your web site visitors.


• Content Density: Including too much information in one location can push visitors away. The common-sense trend is to make your web site text as informative as possible in only a few words. The problem is that when too much information is offered, readers get tired of reading it after a while and become distracted. Strive for providing short and relevant texts with links to more in-depth information when necessary. Bullet lists are an excellent means of breaking up information into sections that are easily digested and will not drive away visitors to your Web site. The same principles apply to lists of links -- too many links in one place becomes little more than line noise and static. Your lists of links should be kept short and well-organized so that readers can find exactly what they need with very little effort. Helping your visitors find what they want in your web site, you’ll make them appreciate its value.


• Content categorizing: It was already mentioned that a web site can be easily accessed whet its content is regularly changed. Of course, new materials can not be added to five-year old materials. New contents should remain fresh long enough to be read by web site visitors. That why you need to make different categories in your web site, especially if it’s an online portal. Developing your web site content and categories you’ll make your visitors sure that every time they visit your site, they’ll find same new and interesting information.


• Decorative Images: Except banners and other necessary branding, decorative images should be used as little as possible. Use images to illustrate content when it is helpful to the reader. Do not put too many images over the Web site just to pretty it up because you risk making the site too tawdry. Besides, some decorative images load slowly, get in the way of the text your readers seek, and are not visible in some browsers or with screen readers.


• Thumbnail image size: When you have image galleries with many pictures you should link them to a list of thumbnails. It is a common tactic that allows online visitors to get an idea of what they’re about to see. It is important to avoid making them too small because the visitor to your Web site cannot get a useful idea of the main image from the thumbnail. It is also important to actually produce scaled-down and/or cropped versions of your main images, rather than to use XHTML and CSS to resize the images.


• Webpage title: Many Web designers do not set the title of their Web pages. Obviously, it’s a mistake, if only because search engines identify your Web site by page titles and it’s the title that matters when displaying the results. In general, web designers use the same title for every page of the web site. It would be far more useful to provide a title for every page that identifies not only the Web site, but the specific page. The title should still be short and compact. A long web page title is almost as bad as no Web page title at all.

Following these principles in developing your web site project, you’ll definitely enhance its chances to get bigger successes.