Business Website Advice

Did you know there is a war waging against the Comic Sans font? I’d hate to have a website created in a font that is having a war waged against it. 

There are Flickr categories and places on MySpace dedicated to Ban the Sans. Why? Because they’re sick of it being misused. 

  Read the rest of this entry »

Being easy to navigate always earns my applause. Travelbug floats my boat when it comes to homepage navigation.  The two big needs of accommodation directories are satisfied immediately: location and availability.

The designers show they know about usability. Should do, Travelbug is the new venture into accommodation directory business from the folks at TradeMe.

I was so happy when I first laid eyes on that beautiful map of New Zealand smack dab in the middle of the homepage.   Read the rest of this entry »

For readers new to blogs here’s my show and tell article with screen shots of my Sticky Websites blog showing 22 different elements. Learn their names, where they appear and get tips on how you read and use them.

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on blog basics. Note my Browse Articles section now has a category dedicated to the benefits and risks of blogs for business owners.

Boggled by blogs?  You are not alone.  More than one new subscriber sheepishly wrote me of blogs boggling their brain.  My thanks to a reader who asked, “Kath, what’s a blog? I’m not quite up with technology and don’t know if it’s too much for me.” 

My answer:  worry not, you too can understand blogs. This is for you and for all those who felt like asking, but didn’t, “How do I read a blog?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Sticky Websites are Easy to Read
Sounds simple. It’s basic website advice that too many sites ignore. Besides the actual font style - Verdana, Times New Roman, Arial etc - the size of the font makes a big difference to whether readers stay or leave. Read the rest of this entry »

So much to read, not enough time. That’s what drives me to cheat-read.

Skim, scan call it what you will. Cheat-read is what my 8th grade English teacher called it.  She’d test for picky little details just to see if we read the whole thing.

I think many of got that early lesson because most people feel like they’re the only onces who skim a page and hate to admit it. 

Guilt be gone. Research tells us we look for certain things that tell us to slow down… Read the rest of this entry »

Vote with your click!  If it’s too hard to read, we Click Off ! 

That’s what we do. We get irritated frustrated and impatient when faced with screeds of long paragraphs, no headings, no bold, no lists.   Read the rest of this entry »

Tired eyes and a tired mind drive visitor’s away from your website.  Minimise online reading strain with a simple change of font from say Times New Roman to the popular font made specifically for easy online reading, Verdana.

Fonts needs to be simple and have enough space. Some fonts are way too fancy to be easily read online.  Even Times New Roman can be too fancy. It’s from the Serif family which means it has bits and pieces on each letter that the eye must wade through and brain must process.  Whereas, Verdana - Arial - Helvetica are all from the Sans Serif family. Clean, no extra bits, easy on the eyes and brain.

Use a different font for headings if you wish but sometimes just a larger size or different weight such as bold or italics will do the job.

Tired eyes in low lighting can fatigue eyes very quickly.  Keep your readers feeling positive and energetic about being on your website. Don’t fatigue your readers with busy fancy, difficult to read fonts.

Want to suggest a font that drives you mad? There’s a whole campagin against using Comic Sans but that’s the topic of a future post. Til then, what tempts you to click off at the site of it?  Add a comment, please.