Posts Tagged ‘Nbsp’

Web Design Detail

Web Design in Detail

When it comes to web design, very close attention should be paid to every aspect of the pages layout, the navigation, and the overall look.
 
Keep in mind the theme, and what the site will be doing, once published, be it ecommerce, news broadcasting, or blog.
 
Here are some pointers that you can use as guides, to make sure your website not only looks well, but performs well too.
 

7 Web Design Tips

 
1) Only use a splash page as a lead gatherer.
 
Splash pages are those pages that have almost no content, except for a few lines, maybe a picture, and a subscriber box. These are only for email address collecting purposes, and are a specialized process.  Unless your entire website is built around the squeeze page method, then don’t use them.
They can be a web design challenge, due to the fact that their owner may insist on continuous tweaking after installing.
 
2) Drop those flashing banners
 
It pains me to see so many of my students ignoring my advice, and plastering their websites with banner ads. There are few things more annoying than a well designed site, with good navigation, covered in banners, like it has some form of Internet disease. Get rid now, and stick to clear web design.
 
3) Use clear, simple navigation
 
The navigation system is paramount to the success of your website. This may sound stupid, but robots also need to have the quickest and easiest way to discover all your web pages, for SEO. Keep your navigation simple, and easy to follow
 
4) Let users know where they are
 
Do not confuse your visitors by leading them down a series of links, to a page, like leading a child through a maze. Try the silo method of navigation, or use a simple breadcrumb trail to allow your visitors a quick route back to a page they want to check again. Basic web design elements, but often ignored.
 
5) Never force audio video on your visitors
 
When you click on a page, and it really wipes its feet when loading, you may sense what is coming next. The web designer has made the video load on entry, and users should be given the choice. The same applies to audio, give surfers a choice! These multimedia players have controls that can easily be displayed on your web pages.
 
6) Forget flash on page load
 
Get your designer head into the real world, and think of the practicalities of  the millions of web surfers that have not got a broadband connection. Flash is a great tool, but it is still to resource hungry on a page load for any dialup user. We want to please our visitors, not annoy the hell out of them.
 
Keep your videos separate from your loading times, and keep all those poor people with slow connections on side.
 
7) Remain compliant
 
Keep up to date with the latest trends, gizmos and gadgets, but always try to keep your site as compliant as possible with w3, access and policies. Display a privacy policy, have a feedback section and follow the rules of mainstream website etiquette, for user friendly web design.

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Customizing And Website Layout

Call it a theme, a layout, a design, or a flavor, your websites overall look should not only be pretty, but also practical.

Try to keep your website layout within accepted guidelines. There are several sites around that project the very latest in design, and coding skill, but you need a PHD to use the stupid navigation.

These tweedy designers think they are so clever for thinking up these concepts, but to put them on a live site with no instruction, is just dumb.

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This also applies to web designing.

Every individual should definitely want their website to look good, at least, the best they can be. Here are a few things you could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.

When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional. Remeber, red and green, should not be seen.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing. Salespages can also divert from this rule.

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs. 

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

One of the primary functions of a well-organized, good website, is to keep your visitors on the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is uncommon. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it’s content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website aims to provide product information, to make sales, or gather leads. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

1 )  Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think. 

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned  in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding, ergo better?

Keep you navigation simple, and easy to find, your visitors will reward you with reduced bounce rates and higher page counts.
 

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