1) Discreet background



Choose a subtle background and contrasting background graphics. The background of the text on a page should only be in one color. The more spectacular a background graphic is the less the text in the foreground is perceived. The text should deduct contrast from the background.

2) Balance of text and pictures

The visitors of your web site initially consider the upper left corner. Then their eyes move slowly to the right and then downwards. Make sure that there is great content at the focus of the visitor. So place the most important content into the upper left part of a web page. Surprisingly visitors concentrate first on text and not on the images of a page. Make sure that your page is not cluttered with pictures and contains sufficient information in form of text.

2) Not too many design elements

Make your site easy to read. Remove unnecessary design elements such as shadows and color gradients.The most successful websites in the world are very simple. Examples are Google, Amazon and eBay. As an opposite example there is MySpace. Each profile is different and the information a visitor of a profile is looking for is often not where it is expected to be. MySpace Layouts will help to organize a MySpace profile properly. Use serif fonts like Arial or Sans Serif. These are character sets the visitor is used to. Look at the size of the fonts used. There should be no more than two or three different sized fonts on a single site.

4) Not too many graphics

On many web site the number of graphics that do not meet the purpose. Limit yourself in the use of graphics on a logo and some images which are referenced in your content. A web page may contain graphical buttons for navigation purposes as well if you want to put special attention to the referenced function. A good example for such a button is the "In the shopping basket" button at amazon.

5) Not too many colors

Limit yourself to a few text colors which contrast the text clearly from the background. Also, the navigation elements and other page elements should not use too many different colors.

6) Adequate page size

Avoid a horizontal scroll bar on your web pages. Make sure that your page is not bigger than the usual screen dimensions of the user. Today you can rely on screen resolutions of 1024x768. It is even better if your site is good at adapting different window sizes. Vertical scrolling in acceptable. Prefer to put your content on subsequent pages instead of making very long pages.

7) Acceptable loading times

Make sure that the loading times of pages for the user is not too long. Most of the loading time of a web page consists of the load contained graphics. For images and photos use the jpg format with medium quality. For graphics buttons (such as navigation buttons) you should use the gif format, so that the readability of the text is not under compression suffers.

The design of a Web page requires some creativity. The above tips lay the basis for ensuring that the user gets a positive impression. In order to simplify the start you can use freely available web page templates (often called layouts or templates) and customize it. You can also use one of the many HTML editors to simplify your work. The above tips are based on the habits of a typical Internet user and are used by many websites. They should not be viewed as dogma.