Web Design Tips
How To Make A Website > Web Design Tips
An key part to making a website is the overall look and ease
of use. You can get all the visitors you need but ultimately you
want to get your visitors to return or if you're selling something
you need to get the visitor to convert into a sale.
In this section I'm going to cover some of the more
common mistakes by web designers and recommend some of
the more standards of a website. Some of this will seem
trivial since you've obviously been to websites before
but it's still important to read and consider in your
web building process.
Effective Web Design TipsAs I'd mentioned, you ideally want
your visitors to come back after their initial visit so sticking
with certain standards is important. Don't just design the website
with what you like, you need to consider your visitors as well.
Below you'll find some tips and a brief explanation of each along
with a link to detailed information for those tips that require
additional explanation.
- Clear Navigation - This is going to
help your visitors navigate through your website. This is also a
great way to push your more more popular items or most important
content. You can see to the left that I've listed the items in my
navigation from the basic information to the more advanced
information. You'll also see that I have a top navigation that lists
a few items that I feel are important and I want to be clearly seen.
- Screen Resolution - Not all computer
monitors are created equally. There are still people out there that
are using monitors with 800 x 600 resolution so it's important that
you attempt to design your website with those visitors in mind. The
best way to work around this is to design your site in terms of
percentages instead of pixels.
- Minimize the use of images - Images
take additional time to load and can slow a page down. If this is
the case a visitor may not sit around for the page to load and may
go off to another website. Again, not all computers are created
equal, there are people who still use dial-up so take that into
consideration before you load your website with images.
- Readable Fonts - You'll want to make
sure that you stick with some of the more common fonts such as
Arial, Times, etc. The font that you're reading on this website is
Verdana with a font size of 10. You may be tempted to use some
fancy-schmancy font but it may not be easy to read for your visitors.
- Spelling & Broken Links - These
two tips are important because it demonstrates professionalism. If
you're website has a bunch of typos or links to other pages or
website don't work it reflects on you so be sure to run your
spell-check and verify that you're hyperlinks are linked properly.
- Colors - Often times you hear to visit
websites that you like when deciding on a color scheme but I don't
agree with this. My suggestion is to visit some of the major players
and see the color schemes and layouts that they use. They have
obviously done the research to determine what works best so I would
recommend using their knowledge when building your website. With
that said, I'm not saying to copy their website by any means, I'm
simply recommending that you take into consideration what the major
players have done.
Free Website TemplatesIf you don't want to get right into
building a website from scratch I'd recommend looking into website
templates. The great thing on a beginners budget is the fact that
there are 100's of websites that offer free website templates.
Free website templates allow you to achieve a professional look and
all you need to do is fill in the blanks with your text and images.
From there you can simply
upload your website and it's online without spending hours
trying to achieve the look that you want.
Read more on free website
templates.
Try To Avoid Using FlashIf you're not familiar with Flash,
it's application that can be used to create cool effects such as
introductions, games, etc. You can view an example of a flash
website by
clicking here.The issue is that Flash is a plug-in which
means that the visitor must have Flash installed on their computer
in order to view it. The other issue is that Flash is delivered via
a large file, for those people who don't have DSL or cable it could
take quite awhile for the page to load.
Lastly and potentially the biggest reason to not use Flash is for
search engine purposes. Search engines are unable to crawl a flash
file and determine what it's about. This will keep you from
obtaining natural search engine results.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)CSS is a file that contains a
bunch of shared formatting code that is separate from each web page.
The benefit to CSS is that you can update one file and it'll update
your entire website.
To give you an example, take a look at the heading 'CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets)' just above this text. You'll find that I
use the same type of heading on every single page of my website. If
I decided that I wanted to change the font or the color of this I
would have to open all 300+ pages of my site and update each page
individually. With CSS all I have to do is open my CSS file and
update one line of code, upload the one file to my server and every
single page on my website is updated.
There are entire websites dedicated to CSS because of all of the
possibilities. I've created a dedicated page to explain the basics.
I would recommend taking the time to read my page on
cascading style sheets.
Should You Just Hire A Web Designer?I realize that this is
all a bit overwhelming but look at it this way. At one point I knew
nothing about web design and over time I was able to obtain the
knowledge to manage my own network of websites.
My recommendation is start with the basics as I'd done and as
your needs grow, come back and research the technologies that you
are now needing.
Take a look at my page on hiring a web design
designer before making that final decision.
It may just change your mind and save you a ton of money!
Create an impressive web page by hiring the best web design company to design on your behalf.
Webmaster ForumI invite you to visit my
webmaster forum,
it's a great place to discuss websites and ask questions to fellow
webmasters regarding topics that you may still have questions on. |
