Listen Up -- Clueless in Cyberspace!

By Judith Tramayne-Barth
Posted Wednesday, September 29, 2004

You designed the perfect web site. Right? Well let's use the following scorecard and see how your site ranks. Is it good, bad or ugly? Take this web design quiz and find out.

==> Your index page loads in 6 to 10 seconds.

Fantastic! That means your visitor hasn't clicked off and gone elsewhere. Give yourself 10 points.

==> You've gotten over your fetish for frames.

Praise be, you've seen the light. Search engine robots will march all over your site freely gathering information so your rankings will be higher. Add another 10 points.

==> You've used a color safe palette with colors that don't cause brain damage.

Hallelujah! You get another 10 points. You've come to the realization less color is more conducive to getting your message across to your visitor.

==> Nothing blinks, scrolls or goes blip in the night.

Excellent! Give yourself 10 more points. And, if your visitor is not greeted with a dialog box which shows you don't know how to use javascript, give yourself an additional 10 points.

==> Snappy headline which draws interest.

Super you've discovered one of the key rules in keeping a visitor's attention. Take a bow and chalk up 10 more points.

==> Content is not *I* centered.

Pat yourself on the back. You've actually figured out it's the benefits to **them** your visitor wants to see and not all the great things you've accomplished. You deserve this 20 points.

==> Navigation is easy

No one gets lost on your site. Your navigation is consistent and leads them by the hand through your labyrinth of pages. Outstanding! 10 points more.

==> You don't bury your prices.

By having your prices on the same page as your product or service, you show you are a savvy entrepreneur. Will wonders never cease. This 10 points means you know playing hide and seek with your prices means no sales.

Add an additional 50 bonus points if you use keyword phrases in your web page content, have no mis-spellings and your site has free stuff.

So how did you score?"

0 to 60
Oh, um, well... at least you now have a guideline on what needs to be changed.

70 to 90
Not bad but not perfect. A little more tweaking and you'll have one heck of a site.

100 to 150
WOW, send me your URL, I want to see this site! On second thought, don't. I don't want to be green with envy. It might not be a safe color. :-)

About the Author

Judith Tramayne-Barth writes excellent ebooks for her "A Good Read Art & Book Club" members. They learn how-to make money on the Internet, market "Smarter Not Harder" and save thousands of $. Either visit (http://www.agoodread.com) or request artandbookclub@sendfree.com to find out how a membership will benefit you.