1) Always use a light background with black or dark text. Dark backgrounds with white or light text are far more difficult to read and will switch people off from your site

2) Have a prominent, catchy Headline – make it larger than the rest of the general text on your page & for maximum impact (which has been tested by many internet marketers & proven more effective) change it to red

3) Stick to a common font such as Tahoma, Arial or New Times Roman, with a font size of 16px for the main body text. Fancy fonts can be more difficult to read & are not always available on everybody’s PC.

4) Do not centre anything apart from your headline – people read / scan a website or blog from left to right, centering general text and paragraphs makes it more difficult to read

5) Make your home page / landing page ‘scanable’ – i.e. can someone work out very effectively what you are promoting / selling within 5-10 seconds? Use highlighting, bold, bullets, underlining. The best way to test this is to read the areas of your page that stand out, out loud:
– How long did it take for you to grasp the message?
– Does it match the message you want it to portray?
– Does it make sense?

6) Ensure that there is a clear path in terms of navigation – don’t make it difficult to find something.
– Use proper keywords, ideally ones that clearly represent your business.
– Avoid abbreviations
– Use internal linking from words within your home page through to other relevant areas of your website

7) Do not use a visible vistor counter (if you want to know visitor stats, use an analytics software such as google analytics instead, you will learn far more). Low visitor numbers can put people off.

This is just a start of a series of articles that we will be posting to help you make the most of your website or blog. We hope you find it useful.