Visually appealing websites is one of the reasons why online browsers visit. Along with good web content, attractive and well designed websites entice visitors to come over and over again. If your website is for an online business, this could be very beneficial to you as more traffic would mean more potential customers and most importantly this would mean more revenues.
To design a good website you must learn how to use HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and web page editors. These programs are most helpful to web design newbie as these would facilitate the building of the website. Being a novice at web design, free online tutorials would provide you with invaluable help in building your website.
It is a must to have a definite idea on what you would like your website to look. You should choose the right fonts, graphics, and color as well as page layout. You have to bear in mind however that too much of everything could give negative result. In the case of website building, too many graphics and animations will result to the slow loading of the page. Use graphics sparingly and needless to say, use graphics that have relevance to the content. Of course it is acceptable to use pictures or graphics that would enhance the design of the page but using a picture of your favorite movie star on a website devoted to the care of pets is of course unacceptable. Additionally, glaring colors of the background as well as the text and flashing images would drive visitors away.For sure you wouldn't want visitors to leave when they could be potential customers who could add to your revenues.
Always remember your readers by writing relevant content and be sure that you will be writing topics that your target audience will like. Visitors searching for information would click on links. Be sure to provide strategically placed relevant links at the bottom of your homepage.
Knowing the preference of the target audience would come a long way in ensuring steady traffic. If your website is primarily aimed to give forex information, you should try to achieve a professional look by reducing the graphics and featuring more relevant statistics instead. Now if your target audience is teens, you can give in to your wish of using vibrant colors and featuring video files and clips.
Advertisement is another important factor in web design. Although ads are a source of income it would be wise to keep the ads to the minimum since readers come to your site in search of information and not to read the ads. Moreover, only use ads that have relevance to the content of your website otherwise readers won't be enticed to click on it.
Lastly, the most important factor in web design is keeping the website simple as graphic and animation- rich website would often cause slow loading. All the features and designs made will be useless if visitors will be forced to click on the next link because your page is unavailable or slow to load.
1. Too Many Ads. When you're trying to make money from your website, it's all too easy to overwhelm your site with ads. Put yourself in your user's place and take a good hard look at your site and ask yourself if the ads feel intrusive. Does the site look like an information source or does it feel more like a page-holder for the ads?
2. Plugin Overload. You have to keep plugin useage to a maximum of 1 type per page. If you've got Flash, then you can't have a media player, or if you're using Java, then no Flash. It's not as bad to use the same plugin twice, however.
3. Flash Intros. Please, don't use a Flash intro on your website. They have been so overused that they're becoming universally mocked.
4. Unclear Layout and Navigation. Many websites, especially business sites, suffer from some kind of disease where the very simplest task takes 10 steps. If users are asking you how to do things on your site, then you need to improve your layout and navigation. If there are certain tasks people want to do frequently, put them on the front page.
5. No Marking for External Links. There are 2 kinds of links: internal (to other parts of your website) and external (to other websites). For the benefit of your users, it's best if you mark external links, either by making them a different color or using some kind of a symbol (a box with an arrow is the usual one). It's also good to make the external links open in new windows, so people aren't leaving your site altogether when they click them.
6. Unclear Linking. Some web pages are designed to show links only when people put their mouse over them. While this might make the design look nicer, it is not very user friendly. Instead, use a clearly contrasting color for links, and preferably underline them. This makes them more visible to the user, thus more user friendly.
7. Unlabelled Email Links. Always clearly mark a link that will send email (a mailto link) with the word 'email'. If you turn clicking a name into send email, you'll annoy users who expected to find out more about the person.
8. Broken Links. You should check your links regularly to make sure that they all still work. There's nothing worse than finding a site that looks useful, only to find that it hasn't been updated in years, so most of the links don't work. While a website does mostly run itself after a while, that doesn't mean that you should neglect essential maintenance.
9. Strange Fonts. Stick to the most common web fonts: that's pretty much just Arial, Georgia, Tahoma and Verdana. If you use more obscure fonts, then most users won't have them -- and those that do will find your text hard to read. The only place for non-standard fonts is in your logo or headings, and then only if they are displayed as an image.
10. Badly-sized Text. It's important to keep your text around the standard size. Making text too big or too small makes it hard to read and annoying for many users. The best thing you can do is use relative text sizing (not pixels) that allows the browser to respect the user's preferred text size. You should also consider offering buttons on your site to decrease or increase the font size.
Both Benedict Smythe & Ron King are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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