Essentials Of Good Web Design by Arnab Ghosh
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
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.
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