Category: content marketing

Choosing Good Content: Criteria by Google

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Google is a God among search engines. It is the most-used search engine world wide. Google handles more than three billion searches per day.

Having a website in the first page of Google is not at all easy. But what makes a page relevant enough to be placed at the top of search results? The answer is simple, it’s the CONTENT and how you promote it.

“Content isn’t King, it’s the Kingdom.” Lee Odden

Google has introduced numerous filtering procedures that reject low-quality content from search results. For increasing the traffic of a page, stuffing the keywords and building thousands of links were previous methods of content marketing.

New and fresh technologies are introduced by Google day by day which resulted in drastic changes. It was after the introduction of the new technology that search engine optimization has undergone radical development and these two methods of stuffing and building yields no results at all. Pages consisting of original and quality content gain the very best ranks in Google search results.

Read Also: What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

The new technology made it possible for Google to exclude all those pages with low-quality write ups and no information. Users can easily get access to high-quality materials without wasting time on useless materials.  Few strategies help good content to stay in their position for a long time

 “Content is the reason search begun, in the first place.”  Lee Odden

Follow these steps to help your content retain its position:

Updating your content:

  • Update at least once a week
  • Quicker the content is updated, higher the chances of people visiting the page
  • Frequent updating keeps the page active and content can retain good position

Construction of content:

  • The content must be organized attractively
  • Spelling mistakes should as less as possible
  • Grammar errors are prohibited in good content
  • A good content have less than three spelling mistakes and four grammatical errors
  • Google uses check feature in Microsoft Word in order to check the grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in contents
  • Proper nouns, new words or words from other languages are not included in the list of probable errors
  • Short sentences always win the game: a good write-up has short but to the point sentences
  • A paragraph must contain only 3-4 sentences with each sentence consisting of 10-12 words
  • Bullet points can make things more clear and make a write-up interesting. People usually concentrate more on points to paragraphs

For the popularity of a page, good content is absolutely necessary. A writer’s skill plays an important part in deciding how Google views a web page. Gone are the days of stuffing keywords and link building. Now, quality speaks.

Quality content is the backbone of any website. Google’s algorithms have now evolved to detect duplicate content. They also take into consideration a lot of other factors such as user engagement, links, image optimization, page load time and other 200 plus factors.

Recommended Read: Importance of Strategy in Content Marketing

Tips for Creating Good Content:

  1. Original Content Always
  2. Create Strong Headlines
  3. Your Content Should be Actionable
  4. Provide Answers in the Content
  5. Always be Accurate about the Reports
  6. Be double sure about the source of information
  7. Content must be Thought-Provoking
  8. Communicate with the audience through the content by Adding Images and Video

Keep your sentences short and to the point

What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

 

Content curation is an art of collecting, analyzing, organizing, and displaying relevant information that can boost traffic to your website.

Content marketing is one of the key strategies any digital marketing agency offers. With the release of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, digital marketers, as well as website owners have become very careful in maintaining their website with fresh, informative and search engine friendly content.

Content curation is an ideal way to attract targeted traffic to websites. To make it simple, Wikipedia explains content curation as the process of collecting, organizing and displaying information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest.

In this form of content marketing, a publisher collects the best content related to a specific topic and targeted to a specific audience. Then, that content is enhanced by adding personal opinions and expertise. This unique content that includes your personal insights can help readers understand why the information you’re citing is valuable and relevant to them.

This form of content has incredible benefits for credibility and brand awareness. Promoting the insights coming from your original content helps to facilitate a stronger relationship with your content consumers – encouraging them to come back to your organization as a source for quality content and a richer experience when navigating through the web. It also gets you ranking for both long and short tail keywords.

Recommended Read:  Importance of Strategy in Content Marketing

Types of curated content are – Aggregation (collection of relevant information on any topic in a specific location), Distillation (curating information into a more simplistic format only with relevant ideas), Elevation (identifying a larger trend or insight), Mashups (merging existing content is used to create a new point of view) and Chronology (gathering information on a particular topic for a specific period of time).

Done properly, content curation can be an excellent piece of your content marketing services campaign. Digital marketing agencies can provide services from experienced content writers to help businesses with content curation.

Tips for including content curation into your content marketing strategy:

  1. Publish curated content in the form of social media blog posts as well as email newsletters
  2. Avoid duplicate content. The more unique content you add, the better the content will perform in search engines, and the safer you’ll be with regard to future algorithm changes.
  3. Avoid promotional stuff. Include informative content.
  4. While curating content, link only to high-quality sites. Less trustworthy sites can impact your performance in search engine rankings.
  5. Target your audience. Add value to the reader. Unless your audience likes the content, they’re not going to share it.
  6. Take permission to add content from curation sources and build a relationship with them that can maximize your reach and value.

Read Also: 8 Reasons Blogging Is Vital For Your Digital Presence

Top Content Curation Tools for 2015

  • Pressly – This is a smart online platform that helps to aggregate the right content for your audience and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
  • Scoop.it – This tool will not only generate the most relevant articles to view and share, but it will also include complementary topics. This tool can not only get to curate content but you are also put in connection with other content curators, which helps to gain insight from leaders in various fields.
  • TrapIt – This “intelligent” tool allows marketers to set up content collections–called “traps”. It delivers a constant feed of real-time, relevant content based on these trapped topics and how you interact with the content.
  • Feedly – This RSS feed is ideal to curate blog content that can be used as resources for future posts or give you great ideas for upcoming content. Free for the basic service, this is an easy to use tool .

An established digital marketing agency with relevant experience in the field can help your business find right source of information online and personalize it, thus attract more readers and improve your brand awareness in short time.

8 Reasons Blogging Is Vital For Your Digital Presence

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In the current internet based world, your service or product needs great online presence to reach the desired heights. It will help bring large number, of traffic to your site and stand out among your competitors.

To improve the online presence of your business, you can seek search engine optimization. SEO is highly effective in bringing your business in front of the whole world. Blogging is a vital part of an SEO strategy.

Reasons Why Blogging Is Essential For Your Digital Presence:

Higher Ranking In SERP – Making use of blog in a regular basis is a better way of adding relevant content in your site. These blogs play an important role as they are useful to your customers. It is one of the best ways to increase your search engine ranking.

Your website gets one more indexed page every time you write a new blog, increasing your chances of a higher ranking in SERP (search engine results page). Blogging can increase your web page indexing by 434%. Linked posts will get Google to index your website for high-quality keywords as well.

Read Also: 6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Social Media Presence – Blogging also helps you to get social media presence as people can share these blogs on Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more. This results in getting new, audience to your business. If you have a blog for your website, then you don’t have to ask your social media manager to come up with new content for your brand on a frequent basis.

More Inbound Links – Blogging helps to generate 97% more inbound links. If you share relevant and quality posts, then many people will link to your blog. This will result in generating traffic to your business. Quality inbound links is another factor that can influence search engines positively.

Helps To Bring Traffic – With regular posting, your blog will generate traffic to your site on a large scale. Thus, they will come to know about your brand. In time, brand, trust would grow manifold.

Convert Traffic Into Leads – You will get more sales and high-quality traffic when people find your blog through Google. When you get such traffic, it will be easy for you to convert them to leads with strategic placements of CTAs (call to actions) placed at right places in the blog.

Builds Trust and Reputation – Blogs are where you begin to influence, persuade and move your prospects to act. It’s where they begin to know, like and trust you. Reading about genuine information will make them come back to your website and look for more relevant topics. This builds trust in their mind, leading to better reputation for your website.

Read Also: SEO  Two Secret Ingredients for SEO Success 

Create Conversations – Keeping your audience engaged is always a good way to build your brand. Blogs create two-way conversations with prospects, customers, and industry peers. It strengthens interaction, comments and feedback.

Knowing Your Audience Better – Blog analytics enables you to track readers, popular topics, click-through, share and comments. By analyzing such data, you will be able to learn more about your audience. Knowledge thus gained can be utilized for furthering marketing strategies.

The earlier you start blogging, the faster your business will obtain its benefits – and don’t forget to set a goal. If you think there are more benefits to blogging, please share with us in the comment section.

Importance of Strategy in Content Marketing

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Online businesses must understand the importance of strategic marketing, if they want to stand out. Without it, there will be no structure to the business. To hook the customers, a digital marketing agency has to maintain strategic focus. Proper planning and clarity in goal setting are vital in any type of business. The following aspects can be implemented to improve the strategic content.

End Target

To come up with an efficient strategy, a business must decide on its target. Having knowledge about the consumers helps to hone out the whole business structure. Without an idea of your end goal, you cannot refine the journey. Familiarise with the needs of the customers through proper research and online surveys. Also, have clarity with the product you are offering to them and why it will mean to them. Consumers can make or break a business.

Cohesiveness

Whatever content a digital marketing agency provide the customers, it must make sense. Maintaining cohesiveness from idea conceptualisation to reaching the consumers is essential. It will provide a clear picture of your business and gain the trust of the consumers. There should not be any room for doubts for your product. A customer must be able to earn value from your business without questioning it.

Sales Goals

Define your financial goals. Make sure they are realistic. Lay your strategy on the basis of your sales vision. Determine a timeframe for all your content marketing plans. An online business cannot achieve overnight structure. It does take time to build trust with your customers. Have confidence on your content and let it work for you.

Budget

Don’t swept away by fancy business ideas. Every single aspect of your online business costs money. The budget must be relevant to the sales goals. It’s a fine balance between not spending at all and spending too much. Better decisions can only be made with experience. So it’s wise to leave it to a digital marketing agency.

Size

As contrast to the popular belief, the bigger content doesn’t promise better reach. The quality is directly proportional to the quantity. Lots of content without any sense will actually backfire. Simple content is much more effective. Consumers should not just only read or see your content, they must also buy your service. The more quality content you create, the more money you are going to make. Be smart and opt for a digital marketing agency to offer professional content for your online business.

Platform

Decide on the platform through which you prefer to reach your customers. The site must have efficient user interface and elegant theme. Fast navigation, text size, imagery, integrated social media, versatile payment and shipping system – all make an impact on your consumer. A well-planned online business by a digital marketing agency will drive large traffic.

Branding

An online business must be unique to thrive in a sea of million digital products available. Concentrate on developing brand value for the business with strategic content marketing. From the information you offer to the color of your site, everything matters in the brand representation. Take professional inputs on the decisions that represent your business values. Anything irrelevant to your vision goes out the door.

Clear content, confident representation and strategic business structure will cut cost and time in huge scales. Nothing is impossible with professional help and perseverance. Believe in your online business, devise strategic plans, you are sure to succeed!

Video Content Marketing Trends 2015

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Human are visual creatures. We believe what we see. To sell any idea, marketers should get consumers to visualize an idea. That’s where video content marketing comes to the scene. Imagine the effect movies, music videos and TV ads have on our psyche. Now, redirect that effect to your business. A digital marketing agency can finish the intimidating task of making videos with ease.

The Emotional Quotient

The video of a silly dog running around a laughing infant has million views in YouTube. Why? The video has no logic or purpose, but it strikes an emotional chord with the viewer. The audience find the video amusing to watch. That’s the strategy. Any valuable product sold with an emotional touch will make all the difference in the revenue.

The videos need not be all about the product. The focus should be on gaining customer loyalty. Make videos of your work culture, the non profit organisations you work with, the brand’s values, team events, etc. When it gets emotional, it gets personal.

Keep It Short

The videos should not lag. The shorter a video, the greater it’s reception. That’s why TV ads are more powerful than full length movies. The tiny-videos put the spotlight on its message before the audience gets distracted. It is the little things that a digital marketing agency does that matters.

Create short Q&A sessions with customer queries as videos for your online site. It will show the customers that you care. Ask your buyers to share their picture with your products and create small montage videos with that.

Entertainment

Video content marketing should never be boring. The visuals should be attractive, well shot and funny. People never forget a famous movie dialogue or a catchy song chorus. It’s because of their entertainment values. Anything wrapped in humour will bring positivity all around. Customers will feel at ease when they see the glamorous or goofy side of your business.

Make funny videos with your workers or share funny stories. Film highlights of the year or show your audience the perks of using your products. Add some catchy tunes to it. There you go! These are some simple equations to videos which one cannot forget.

Information

Boost the value of your products with video content marketing. Watching a video makes a person understand better than reading a book. A digital marketing agency’s videos provide much information about the products in short amounts of time. It’s creative, effortless and efficient.

Make instructional manuals in video formats and upload those to your site. It helps your customers to get the most out of your products. Give a virtual tour of your site to enhance the user interface. Document how your products are made and show them to your customers.

Visual Attraction

The huge advantage of video content marketing over others is that it’s attractive. But, a shabby video will backfire. It’s important to put in efforts to make catchy videos. The length, visual aesthetics, the concept and everything matters. A digital marketing agency can help you with a dedicated video team.

Every single thing that comes on screen is essential and must be given attention. When there are millions of options available, a customer will never waste time on a bad video.

Do follow your competitors’ activities to stay updated with your video content marketing. You learn more by watching videos than reading about videos. It also avoids the same videos being made again.

With many advantages to its side, Video content marketing is a powerful digital marketing tool. By focusing on making quality videos, you help, entertain and guide your customers. When made to feel included, your targets always stay loyal!

Online Video: The Future of Content Marketing

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

 

We live in a world of instant gratification. With people not even having time for their breakfast, nobody likes to sit and read page long stories and marketing content. They much prefer to see it rather than read it. They say one must have be futuristic to run successful online business. When that's the case, online video content marketing is the future that spreads like wildfire in the present.

Accessibility

With our hands permanently glued to our mobile phones, we at least see one video per day. We can't say the same for written media. All the consumer has to do is click the link and see your idea. It saves lot of time for people on both sides. There are lot of YouTube channels that regularly drive million views within a matter of hours. People prefer seeing people rather than reading blogs.

Attractive

The main advantage of video marketing by a digital marketing agency over other marketing strategies is it's very attractive. When we add human touch to the content, it engages the viewer. Emotional strategy is always better than intellectual strategy. Say you are selling a dog food product. You write a blog about it with a healthy and playful dog photo. You also release a video ad for the product on Youtube, showing the dog eating your food and playing around in a ground. Which you think would have attracted the customers?

Size

You can make the customer understand your idea better with a twenty second video instead of writing a five page long article. It avoids any confusion the customers may have about your product as they see it in a real situation. It provides transparency between a business designed by a digital marketing agency and its target.

Budget-friendly

There is a false notion that making a video for business is expensive. But, it is not. You yourself can make a simple video with an amateur camera. Idea is money, not the gadget. If we take YouTube, most of the videos there are shot at home with personal cameras. Still they work. Why? The content. A six-second vine by a digital marketing agency can sell idea.

Curiosity

With small teasers before your product release, you can entice the audience. The more curious they are, that much likely they are to buy your products. Once you deliver your products, trust is built with your customers. This can never be possible with any other marketing.

Instant

The most important feature of online video marketing is that it’s instant. You can shoot a video and upload it instantly. The customers can see it and give the feedback instantly. Once you know the reaction, you can improvise the product if necessary. This creates transparency and cuts down the cost drastically.

Variety

The promotional videos by a digital marketing agency need not be boring. With the types of video formats available, you can do anything with online video marketing. You can release

  • video testimonials of your customers to build confidence,
  • show product demos in real time,
  • instructional videos about how to use your products,
  • interviews with the business heads,
  • Q&A sessions,
  • Pop culture stars endorsing your products, etc.

When you are conceptualising your idea, make sure it’s relevant to your customer. Subtle placement of your product in a brilliant video is more effective than exaggerating. Do not hint on any stereotypes or insults on a particular group of people.

With million dollar businesses happening every second through little screens, it’s obvious who’s the youngest online marketing superstar is. Online videos, of course!

6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

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Content marketing is always one of the top strategies of digital marketing agencies. Blogs play an important role in content marketing. When used in the right way, they can pull a lot of traffic and build exposure. They are a great way for business websites to connect with customers, thus strengthening the brand. It is also a cost-effective way to promote any business. Blogs with useful and engaging content can:

  • Generate leads
  • Grow your business
  • Build your brand

According to HubSpot’s sixth annual report of inbound marketing and sales trends 2014-15, site organic sources such as blogging, SEO and social media are rising in importance.

These simple steps will help to get your blog post found on Google as well as other search engines.

Keep readers in mind

Always write for your readers. Always write something what they may need to know such as solving an issue or some unique insights in to the industry dealt with. Have answer for these questions before you begin a blog.

  • Who your readers are?
  • What is your target audience?
  • How well do you know them?
  • What do they want to know?
  • What problems do they need addressed?

Provide informative and valuable content

Your website’s authority in the industry mainly depends on the value of the content you provide. Informative content have the power to turn readers into customers. Instead of posting monotonous posts regularly, it is ideal to post useful blog tutorials daily or on a weekly basis. Search engines like Google no longer look for specific keywords and to answer the queries of the user. Rather it looks for content and makes their own conclusions as to what your website is all about. So it is ideal to think the way your readers might search for information

Along with giving genuine information, in digital marketing agencies also recommended adding videos or infographics to increase credibility. For instance, if you are talking about SEO tactics, it is better to include a recent video about what Matt Cutts said about this topic or to include an infographics that gives clear idea about the topic.

Choose effective blogging platform

With user-friendly blogging platforms such as WordPress (WP), you can customize the design, write posts and can also easily publish videos, photos, galleries, and slideshows.  With WP’s clean coding, search engines can easily read and index a site’s content. Make sure to choose better SEO plug-ins like Yoast that offers a ‘Snippet Preview’. With this option, you can find how your Meta data will appear in search engines. This plug-in will also tell you how obviously your ‘keyword’ features in the different elements of your meta data.

Use social media

A blog post, however engaging and useful, will not make any difference unless it is discovered by the audience. Social media platforms provide opportunities to drive traffic to your blog. Major sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and YouTube. These are powerful tools to promote blog posts as they have millions of subscribers.

Interact with readers

Your blog is a conversation. Though it begins with the information you provide, it continues with comments from readers, and with comment and criticism from other bloggers. To keep your content interactive, make sure to post questions, polls and contests for your readers. This will keep them deeply involved in the conversation.

Focus on Headlines and subheadings

Ensure that the headline you write focuses on readers and not search engines. Boring titles with expected keywords will work no longer, according to digital marketing agencies. Sub headings or H2, H3 tags should also be up to the point. The right choice of these tags helps you to create a digestible, readable and easily scannable post.

Writing great guest posts for other blogs can draw new readers to your blog. Using analytics will help digital marketers as well as bloggers to keep track of how people arrive at their blog and then use this information to improve their blogging tactics.

21 Different Types of Content that are Popularly Consumed

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

Content Marketing can be hard.

You right thousands of words and hundreds of blogs, without much success.

Why?

The reason is quite simple – you are not giving people what they crave.

But try as you may, if you are a digital marketing agency or a content marketer, you might not be able to understand the popular types of content. The type of content that you think would be popular need not necessarily be the most popular. There might be key ingredients that you might have missed.

The news around you might be boring. But as a content marketer, you should be able to make it interesting. Here is a popular infographics listing out 21 types of content everyone craves for.

 

08-06-2015 21 Different Types of Content that are Popularly Consumed

 

 

Source

 

Be sure to voice your opinion in the comment section.

 

Tricks to Make Your Content Visible to Internet Audience

Posted on by NextJSjointviews

What’s your idea of successful web content?

Most commonly, people think it’s avoiding grammatical errors, placing keywords perfectly and using simple language.

Agreed. These are important aspects of great website content. But, these points alone can’t make it the most successful web content. To say that web content is successful, it should be visible to millions in the Internet. For that, simply posting the content in a website is not enough. You should put some extra efforts so that your content is in the spotlight!

Follow these simple tactics to help your web content earn attention:

Research vastly

More you research on a topic, that much comprehensive your content will be. You should be spending about 60-70% of your total time on research before you start writing. This will help you understand the subject very well. Your research can include infinite number of topics such as present trends, hottest topics, key words that work etc.

Check quality using SEO

If you thought Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was just about inserting key words, you are wrong. SEO can search for the issues that hinder the visibility of your content in the Internet. Seek help from an SEO expert to do that for you would be beneficial. You may need to spend time and money for the same, but it is worth the effort.

Do not stuff keywords

Integrating keywords into your content can have a great impact on web traffic and search engine rankings. But, it doesn’t mean that you must intentionally incorporate keywords into every sentence you write. High keyword density is only going to make your content boring. It’s not going to do any good for you.

Keep it short and sweet

Long and complicated sentences can make any reader dizzy. Internet users in particular, are impatient readers. They’ll lose interest in your content if they see long, tiring sentences and paragraphs. Stick to short and simple sentences that the readers can understand. You can also try methods like subheadings, bullet points, numbering etc. This can make the content appealing and interesting.

Be unique

Research is good. But, it doesn’t mean that whatever you researched must reflect in your content as it is. Try to be different.  You can express your views about the topic in the content. Be natural with your thoughts. But, do not act like a pro. The readers of your content may be anyone from a beginner to an expert.

Add quality images

More than words, it’s the images that attract web traffic. Also, the number of image searches is at a rise these days. Therefore, never take them lightly. The images must be relevant to the content. Also, they should be unique.  Images don’t just mean those placed between texts in a blog. It can be Infographics, graphs, pie charts etc. that go with the text of the content.

Share your content

Nowadays, everybody uses social media platforms to share anything online. Why not use the same platform to promote your business?  You can use popular social media websites to share your content and earn potential customers.

The above mentioned tricks can be used to instil interest among global audience and help your business to flourish.  However, this is not the end! There are many more ways you can use to turn an ordinary web content into something unique.

How To Overcome Web Design Flaws And Earn Potential Customers

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In the high-paced search and click world,a website is undoubtedly the first digital marketing tool to attract customers. It is a tool, a cost-effective solution to put in your sales-pitch 24×7. With customers browsing through numerous websites before making their buying decision, it becomes necessary for a company to represent themselves properly.

Your website should be designed keeping in mind the target audience and conversion of visitors to potential customers. It would not be wrong to say that a great design is worth a thousand words. Yet, most company websites have web design flaws that they are totally unaware of and which are costing them customers as well as reputation.

So, here’s a quick insight on the common web design mistakes and what can be done to rectify them to earn potential customers.

Capture the Wandering Eye

The attention span of the average online customer is very limited – 8 seconds according to most studies. If your website does not manage to capture their attention within that time gap, then you need to rethink your web design.

Several studies have been conducted and it has been found that people tend to view content across e-commerce sites or articles in an ‘F’ pattern. Therefore the best thing to do would be to place your most essential information, like your most important links or call-to-action buttons in this pattern.

Put your most valuable information on the upper half of the website or as it is called above-the-fold. Having said that, they do scroll down, and when they do, their eye reaches right at the bottom where the scrolling stops. This is where you can bank on to put your call-to-action. Another time-tested method to capture the wandering eyes is to use BIG BOLD headlines.

Mind Your Colour

One of the most important things that make your website stand out is the usage of colours. And it is also one of those things that is least understood and often incorrectly used. The result being – difficult to read web pages, nearly impossible to read if printed or in other words plain ugly.

Even the most seasoned graphic designers make blunders and abuse colours.

So, what are the colours or rather colour combinations that actually work? Before using any colours, you have to consider the fact that aroung 0.5% of women and 8% of men have some form of colour blindness. One of the most common being colour blind to red-green.

So, avoid using plenty of colours that will make the design heavy on the eyes. Rather, just stick to two or three basic colours and use other images and graphic symbols to make it attractive.

Readability & Legibility

Yes, an attractive design/interface does matter, but readability and legibility are crucial elements.  The text should be easy for the reader to be able to grasp it. Bizarre font styles, combined with some awful colour combinations will just render the entire page unreadable.

Fortunately, there are some really simple tricks that you can use to make your site user-friendly.First and foremost, keep it simple. Simple letterforms and simpler design make the site more legible. To make it more readable avoid capitals, use a reasonable point size and create even word spacing.

Consistent Interface Design

Excessive creativity is a killer. Some designers just go over the top, and try to bring all aspects of creativity into the design. A different design for every single page within a website can be utterly confusing and annoying to the customer. So the key point here is consistency.

No matter how well you design the website, if the overall look and feel is not consistent, then customers will not be able to relate to the website and will leave the pages soon. Again the keyword is SIMPLE. If you want your customers to feel at home then a consistent template is a must. That combines with an aesthetically simple design with uncluttered page and uncomplicated menus will work wonders.