Essential Of Good Web Design
Essential Of Good Web Design
If you want to design a web site, you should follow
nine rules of thumb.
1. General Impression
Your web site is like a window display of your business. If the
impression that it creates is not good enough visitors will simply
leave.
Your site must be:
Neat
Organized
Attractive
Professional
It is better if your site shows less than too much. Over crowded
websites, with too many flashy elements, create a negative effect
on your visitors.
2. Message
The first question that visitors ask themselves when coming to
your site is “What can I gain from here?” Visitors are
not impressed that much by promotional offers of free goods and
services. They are looking for ways in which your site can be useful
to them. If your site should offer one or more of the following:
Entertainment
Information
Advice
Helpful tips
Contact with people who share same interests, links to other interesting
sites. Your corporate site should provide information about your
business and products and services. A business site should be simple
to navigate and offer products and services that located in a simple
way and ordered quickly.
3. Fast download
Your site should load as quickly as possible. Market research shows
that the average surfer leaves a site that fails to load in 7 seconds.
For a dial-up modem that means a maximum of 56 kilobytes. So avoid
large graphics and flash animations.
The opening page of your site should not overwhelm your visitors
with too much information or you risk loosing them. Many Internet
sites offer advice on how to increase the download speed of your
site. Look for such articles read them and follow the suggested
advice.
4. Graphics and Design
The graphical design of a website is crucial for a positive first
impression. Every graphic element should help present the main idea
of your site. Funny images are not appropriate for a business site,
but they can be a good choice for an entertainment one. Graphics
load slowly so use them sparingly and efficiently.
Try to keep the overall size of your web pages around 30k. Individual
pictures should be about 6-8k. Additional 2k adds about one second
to download time. Right-click on an image and check its properties
to find out its size. The choice of colors is also significant since
different colors provoke different feelings. The warm colors like
orange and red increase the pulse rate and stimulate the senses.
Cold colors like blue and green have the opposite effect.
Yellow is considered a happy color because it reminds us of the
sun. Select the right colors for the emotion that you want to create.
People read a text from top left down to bottom right. Place your
images accordingly. Images that have a directional aspect should
point to the most important part of your page. If you use the image
of a bird its beak should point to inside the page and not outside.
This is valid for all images: Faces should be turned to the center
of the page. Cars should face the center of the page. Neckties,
roads and other prolonged objects should point from left to the
right and from top to bottom. You should put your navigation bars
down the left side of your page, as well. This will keep them visible
for your visitors.
5. Readable texts
Here we do not consider choice of words (we will deal with this
later on), but rather the appearance of words on a page. To impress
word should be surrounded by sufficient white space. Use dark texts
on light backgrounds (preferably white). Dark backgrounds make visitors
feel confined and depressed. Bright backgrounds make texts difficult
to read and red, orange and purple backgrounds can be dazzling.
The text color you choose is equally important, different browsers
interpret colors in different ways. A text that looks fine on your
browser may be illegible on a different one. Divide your text in
columns to make it simpler and faster to read. It is easier to follow
a column than a large chunk of text that stretches across the whole
page.
Choose fonts that are available on all computers and that are easy
to read like Arial, Times New Roman, Garamond and Courier. Exotic
fonts like Gothic, Script, Westminster, or Cloister look attractive
in headings, but not all users have them installed on their computers.
In this case, your visitor’s browser will render the missing
font with a system one and ruin the effect that you are aiming at.
6. Easy Page Flow
Most people do not handle well large pieces of information. We
have already suggested that you divide your page into columns that
would separate the text vertically but you should also use headings
and sub-headings that separate it horizontally. Write short statements
for the key facts on your page and use the statements for headings.
Examine each section to check if you can break it into smaller pieces.
Write a short statement for each of these pieces and use these
statements as sub-headings. Use the same font for all your headings
and subheadings. Make them bold and increase the font size for headings.
It will make simple to spot the large and bold headings and subheadings
that are the same size with the text but bold.
If you follow this advice, your visitors will be able to see the
key points of your page at a glance. Write your headings carefully,
because if you grab your visitors’ attention with them they
will stay and read on. If you want to attract your visitors’
attention to other parts of the text you can make some sentences
bold or change their color. Use this approach carefully, because
some colors are difficult to read even on a white background.
7. Navigation
There are two reasons why you should put your navigation bar on
the left side of your page -
People read from left to right and from top to bottom. Web surfers
expect to find navigation bars on the left of web pages. It is a
good idea to put a button at the bottom of a long text that would
allow the visitor to return to the beginning of the text.
When you create a page design that you like use it on every page
of your web site, it will make your web site predictable and will
help your visitors find the information they need. Save a blank
page with the layout, columns, logos, standardized graphics, alt
tags and navigation bars built in. Use this page as a template for
all pages that you create for your web site and just fill in the
content that you like.
8. Privacy and Customer Opinions
It is invaluable to get prospective customers to trust you, if
you run a corporate site. Tell your visitors how you are protecting
their private information. Set a privacy page that explicitly lists
how and what information you collect from your visitors, how you
keep their e-mail address, how you accept and process their orders,
who has access to this information and what precautions you take
with information collected from minors.
People like to know what your customers think of your products
and services. Invite your customers to share their opinion, they
would love to know that it is appreciated.
Make a dedicated page with the opinions of your customers. Offer
links to their web sites in exchange of their opinion. This can
be beneficial for both parties involved.
9. Spelling, Grammar and Word Choice
These are of crucial importance. If you are not careful here, all
your efforts are in vain. Poor spelling and careless grammar and
punctuation are the easiest way to lose visitors. Spelling and grammar
mistakes tell that the site owner is lazy, careless, and unprofessional.
Your visitors would not like to do business with you. What can
you do? Take steps to polish your own writing. Hire somebody to
check and edit your writing. Hire somebody to write the text of
your pages for you.
About the Author Mr. Arnab Ghosh is
having more than 4 years experience of internet, web development
& web design. Now he runs his own webdesign & web development
company named Mod Studio India at Calcutta,India which can be viewed
at http://www.modstudioindia.com. You will get loads of webmaster
resources at http://www.modstudioindia.com.
|
