Lesson #19 Keep Your Design Clean
Written By Titmowse

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. You will discover yours as you travel on your journey. Nobody is asking you to be a genius webmaster. We can't make you into a design guru. What we will do is show you that it is possible to create your own adult web site with your own hands. Your page doesn't have to be perfect or extraordinary in order to make you money. All you need to learn is a little HTML and a few basic tips on how to design sites that catch the eye of a porn surfer.

One of those basic tips is to keep your design clean.

By clean we mean uncluttered, arranged, neat, tidy, orderly, groomed.

What we don't mean is that you create a site devoid of images, ads and text.

Please keep in mind that all surfers are impatient. Studies have shown that if a page takes more than 25 seconds to load, surfers will leave. Many of the ones that wait for a site to load usually won't venture down to see what's displayed below the scroll line. You have precious few moments to reach your surfer and you've got to get them hooked while they're still above the fold. You must point your surfer to the right destinations immediately with your layout. If that layout is messy then your surfers become confused and frustrated and you lose them forever.

The easiest way to clutter a site is with image overkill. Not just logos. Not just ad banners. Not just buttons and bars. One must consider all images when building a clean website.

Logos

A webpage Logo is important. Your logo is your brand. However, if your logo is 250 KB in size and 300 x 500 pixels in dimension then it might as well be a huge boulder blocking your storefront. If your logo is taking up half of your surfer's browser window, then your logo isn't a logo anymore. It's junk. If your logo takes longer than a few seconds to load, it's a hindrance to your surfer.

Buttons and Bars

All those little, decorative graphics that give a website personality. These are referred to as buttons and bars. That animated horizontal divider. That rotating email button. Those 3D menu graphics. They might be cute or cool but do they load quickly? Does the surfer have to scroll left, right or down to find them? These relatively small images add up and can be downright irritating if they're overdone.

Ad Banners

Obviously, if you are going to sell for sponsor programs then you're going to put ad banners on your site. While it's a proven fact that surfers tend to click text ads more than image ads, banners serve a marketing purpose. In addition, you're probably going to post a few reciprocal banners in trade for listings on top sites, link lists and traffic exchange services. These banners cause a lot of trouble for the beginning adult webmaster. We tend to throw them on the site all bunched at the top, willy nilly on the page or squished down at the bottom.

There are other ways to funk up a website besides going nuts with images. Crazy tables, blinking text, obnoxious Java applets are just a few of those other ways. We point out images because graphic excess is a common newbie webmaster mistake. What you need to realize is that a clean page is more marketable than a messy one.

Of course, you want to have surfers scroll down, click ads and surf deeper into your web. What we are trying to show you is that your form must have function. The eyes of a surfer track a certain way. Top, middle, top again and then down. Make those places your sweet spots. All else is muddle.

Oh and, don't forget to add your content!