HOW many things did you spot that were wrong with the site? Listed below are twelve observations that we have made about the design, this is by no means a definitive list, just the main things that we noticed and if that was your website, what your customers will have noticed.

There is no page title in the web browser, it just says, 'New Page' - this is usually an indication that the site has been designed through a standard website authoring tool and that it may be a templated design.

The company's logo (which should appear before 'Welcome') has not loaded, suggesting it has not been linked to the page properly or possibly not even uploaded to the server.

The choice of text colour is not suitable for the overall scheme making it very difficult to read.

The image quality is very poor, it is has been compressed too much and become pixelated - not to mention it takes up too much room, a classic example of when someone doesn't have enough to say about their company that they fill the space with a huge picture.

Additionally, when you hover over the image, there is no alternative text to describe the picture. This should be used to help visitors with limited visibility understand what image is there.

The website doesn't fit on the screen, meaning you have to scroll vertically and horizontally to read what is in the bottom right hand corner.

The menu bar is on the right hand side of the screen, traditionally they are on the left hand site because that is where the eye naturally looks to, hence why advertising in most publications occupy this position.

The link to the 'contact us' section in the menu is broken and you cannot access this page.

On the footer there is a date of when the page was last updated, this is over two years ago! In most cases your page should have been edited within the last three months, ideally the last month to ensure visitors have confidence in your company. If you don't look after your website, how can your customers expect you to cater for their needs?

There is a link to contact the company on the footer, however it uses the term 'click here' visitors with visibility problems may be accessing your site using specialist screen enhancers or a website reader and clicking here won't be suitable for their needs.:: more
Completing the hat-trick on the footer bar is the hit counter, before you even consider the accuracy of this data (after all what exactly is this recording?) and as delighted as you might be with the number of visitors to your site, do you really want to share this information with your competitors or your customers? We can provide you with very detailed site statistics as part of our hosting packages.

There is also a noticeable gap at the bottom of the site, if you hold down your left mouse button and scroll down you will see a lot of text appear, this was used to trick search engines into giving you a higher ranking by linking lots of relevant keywords to your site. Search engines are wise to this trick and tend to punish sites that do this with a lower ranking in their listings as a result.

So how many did you spot? The information above doesn't even take into consideration how this site appears on different browsers so there could be more things to worry about. If that was your company website how many potential customers do you think you would have lost within a few seconds of them loading up your site?

If you are interested in what you have just read and would like to speak to us about your website, please contact us. We would be happy to discuss how we can help you develop your website and in turn, your business.