Home
>
Web Design
>
Web Design - 7 Key Things to Avoid

Web Design - 7 Key Things to Avoid

A search for "web design" on Google returns more than 325 million results. So how do we start eliminating all these so called designers? Here are a few of the most common shortcomings.

Watch out for:

Templates

Subdomains

DIY Hosting

High Renewal Costs

Poor Coding

Inaccessible Design

Advertising / Self Promotion

1. Templates

Watch out for designers offering you a choice of templates. This not only means that they're doing no new design work for their fee but could also have an affect on your search engine ranking. If the search engine robots see the same layout, background images and styles over and over again they could penalise your site for being a copy of another site. Best avoided.

2. Subdomains

Watch out for design services offering you your own domain where the address still includes a reference to another company. You should have a domain in this form - www.yourcompany.com. Watch out for www.yourcompany.hostingcompany.com or www.hostingcompany.com/yourcompany. These forms mean that they are putting your site in a folder of their own site and it doesn't carry as much weight. It's an easy way of them saving money and giving you a lesser sevice.

3. DIY Hosting

Watch out for anyone who does their own hosting. If their server goes down it could mean that your site disappears. Servers can be left on for long periods of time but do need to be restarted occasionally. You don't want your site going down - there could be someone in the middle of using it. If they claim to offer hosting find out if they outsource it to a professional company. This is much safer.

4. High Renewal Costs

Watch out for hidden costs. It's quite common for design companies to offer you a full all singing all dancing site for a great price only for you to find that it will cost you half of that again the following year. There are always ongoing costs to a website, hosting and domain name renewal. If there are no ongoing costs quoted, monthly or annual, be wary.

5. Poor Coding

Watch out for poor coding. HTML, the language of web pages, is developing and changing all the time. In fact, HTML is on its way out to be replaced by an enhanced language called XHTML. Look at a page the designer has done or their own site. View the source code and look at the section between the head tags (the word "head" in between angled brackets). Any mention of "style" or a ".css" file is a good sign. Now look at the section between the body tags. If you see lots of tags in angled brackets like "font" or "td" then the page coding is showing its age.

6. Inaccessible Design

Watch out for inaccessible design. This is very similar to the last point. It's important that your site can be used not only by PC users but also by the visually impaired, people using palmtops, PDAs and mobile devices. You can't afford to reduce your audience by having an inaccessible design.

7. Advertising / Self Promotion

Watch out for the design company using your website as a means of marketing themselves. Whilst having a discreet link to their company site at the foot of the page is quite fair and reasonable, be wary of any additional links or advertising. They could be making money selling advertising space which you're paying for.

Chris Smith works as a web designer, developer and internet marketing consultant. For further information on high quality, good value web design please visit his site - professional web design

recurring cleaning service Mundelein ..

In The News:

New phone return scam targets recent buyers with fake carrier calls. Learn how criminals steal devices and steps to protect yourself from this fraud.

New Anthropic research reveals how AI reward hacking leads to dangerous behaviors, including models giving harmful advice like drinking bleach to users seeking help.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Scammers nearly stole an Apple account by exploiting the support system with authentic-looking tickets and phone calls, users can protect themselves with safety steps.

FoloToy restored sales of its AI teddy bear Kumma after a weeklong suspension following safety group findings of risky and inappropriate responses to children.

Threat intelligence firm Synthient uncovers one of the largest password exposures ever, prompting immediate security recommendations.

Viral video shared by Elon Musk shows Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots performing tasks from cooking to construction, garnering over 58.5 million views on social media.

Chinese hackers used Anthropic's Claude AI to launch autonomous cyberattacks on 30 organizations worldwide, marking a major shift in cybersecurity threats.

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Cybersecurity research shows weak passwords remain a major threat, with simple patterns and number sequences putting millions of accounts at risk.

New Android malware BankBot YNRK silences phones, steals banking data and drains crypto wallets automatically. Learn how this advanced threat works.

FDA approves first human trial for Paradromics' brain-computer interface that could restore speech for paralyzed patients through neural technology.

New phishing platform QRR targets Microsoft 365 users across 1,000 domains in 90 countries. Learn how to spot fake login pages and protect your accounts.

OpenTable now uses AI to track your dining habits and share insights with restaurants. Learn what data they collect and how to protect your privacy.

Google's discontinued Nest thermostats still secretly upload home data to company servers despite losing smart features, raising serious privacy concerns.