| By :
Martin Hofschroer
Like girl power and the Macarena, the nineties were responsible for some terrible mistakes which the world of web design was no stranger to. In the days when a website could take minutes rather than seconds to load, web designers were answerable for a variety of annoyances which truly spoiled most people's online experience. Luckily many web design teams are guilt free of these crimes but it's worth taking a trip down memory lane to remind ourselves of such horrors. My biggest pet hate was sites with flashing gifs because these epilepsy-inducing images were often everywhere as were the equally pointless hit counters which could easily be manipulated to exaggerate popularity. The terrible tones of Midi sounds haunted many a website and would massively slow down the loading of a page as well as permanently ruin the enjoyment of any song which was played through the software. Fortunately for the online users of the present there is little evidence of these web design mistakes but there are still plenty of niggles that continue to wreck even the best of websites. Chief among these errors is the overuse of Flash because not only is it an assault on the eyes, 'flashterbation' also slows down a site and damages any SEO strategy. You have been warned! Software giant Adobe has claimed that poor web design can have a negative effect on a business' profits. Ben Watson, principal product marketing manager of enterprise user experience for Adobe's Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit, claimed that too many businesses are losing out on potential profits because of bad web design. He said: "Good design helps business not just at the top line by increasing interactions, but in making more business and becoming more profitable." For companies to take full advantage of great web design then they must also have an effective SEO strategy in place as it does not matter how good your site looks if no one can find it. If, like myself, you love using search engines, then you will have no doubt noticed how Google Places has affected geographical SEO strategy. Google changed its search algorithm so that when you look for services in your geographical area you will be presented with results that show local business in Google Places. It is even more important for SEO strategy to ensure that a website is optimised for geographical phrases especially if locations are important for site traffic.
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