There’s tonnes of tips out there that pinpoint designs that exude a more professional appearance, but me being a noob designer (that’s why we have Luqman and Pudin), I’ll pick another scope to feel good about myself :). And hopefully share some prohibited practices that are still not considered a taboo.
First impression always count. That’s a result of human imperfectness, but keep that in mind and you’ll be far better than being ignorant.
Your corporate website is your most far-reaching front office, so you’ll loose more prospects if they arrive and found out what a cowboy your business is. So here’s some things that you should be aware of if you want to keep your corporate website higher on the professionalism scale:
1. Don’t Use Free Email Host
Never, never sell a business or services which cost hundreds and tell them to contact you at —-@yahoo.com or —-@gmail.com. Being thrifty is not always a positive attribute, and you’re just increasing the suspicion that you’re a scammer. If you have a domain name, just head on to Google Apps and you can have your own GMail attached to your own domain. Free.
2. Check Your Email Designation
Even if you have your own email addy, the designation is as important. Don’t use webmaster@yoursite.com. When people want to contact you, most probably they’re interested about your business, and not “Hey, nice header. How do you make it transparent?”. Using ‘webmaster’ as designation also tells the reader that their email is being directed to your 3rd party developer. Use your official designation (marketingmanager) or better still, use your own name.
3. Don’t Put External Advertisements
“Our business aims to deliver a world class service through principles Ads By Gooooogle Want To Make Money? Learn How You Can Earn 2 Billion in 2 seconds we believe brings the best out of our client’s project”.
Got it? It’s nice to reap in a few bucks on the way but don’t tell your customers that you’re too desperate for cash. It’s like selling unrelated product during your product sales presentation.
4. Don’t Let Updates Be ‘Outdates’
We don’t call the unification of Germany a news. We call them history. If you have your news or updates section and it wasn’t updated for about a year, ditch them. Or maybe relabel them as ‘Archive’. Or guess what. You can also update them. That’ll be nice.
5. Don’t Has A Grammatically Errors
Pun intended. This is an old, classic, rhetoric advice. If your website is a static website, for once get someone who don’t read Icanhascheezburger.com to double-check before it’s even published. Like Arnold Scharzenegger said, “I don’t care if it hurts 5 minutes during the filming stunts, all I care is that the scene is perfect. Because the film will be watched for years.” Trust the termina-tah. (er..Luqman..you’ve checked ours rite?)
6. Don’t Leave Any Trace of a Free Blog Host
Out of the hype, some businesses jump on the bandwagon and decided to write a blog. Good. But don’t direct them to your blog with ——.blogspot.com address. Blogger.com and Wordpress.com now have a redirect service, so use them. And there’s always people crying about Blogger unprofessional appearance, so at least swap the default template and change the favicon. Unless of course, you intend to run a corporate splog.
7. Don’t Use (Obvious) 3rd-party Widgets
We like widgets because they provide great utilities, hassle-free. But if you’re keen to use them on your website, customize their appearance so that it looks like a native feature. Remove any ‘Powered by widgetbox etc.’ And if you like the MyBlogLog recent visitors, at least blend their design with your theme. I don’t actually recommend you using any 3rd-party widgets, but if you can cloak their 3rd-partiness, go ahead. But read their TOS first so you can prepare a logical excuse if you’re caught.
8. Don’t Use Blog Format
This is a controversial issue. I know, I know, for instance WordPress can be as good as any CMS. But more often than not, you’re not designing it to appear like a proper corporate website. Blogging platform tends to carry similiar characteristics- the 2-3 columns look, the comment section, the chronological trace, the ‘written by —- at ——p.m.’.
Regular people don’t actually notice them, but your corporate website (except news, updates etc.) should not carry any time-sensitive information, or risk your visitor thinking “I wonder if these infos still apply today!”. Unless of course your business is the WayBackMachine website.
I believe everything that’s important come in 10. So I must miss a couple of things. That’s for you to figure out and share!
