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Essentials Of Good Web Design
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:
Arnab Ghosh has 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.