Good Website Design Tips
Some websites make us stay on them for a longer durations, as well as appreciating and remembering them. A study of such websites reveals certain characteristics, which can be taken as the tips for a good website design.
Navigation
Websites with good design have neat and easy navigation, all through the website. Include a link to home page on every page, besides a menu on the top and bottom of every page. Organize your pages, provide quick connectivity among all the pages, and have a site map display them all. If your website has many pages, it is good to have a “Search” feature to help the visitors.
People will most often read across the top of the site, down the center, then the left side and lastly the right. If they remain on the page they will possibly make it to the bottom of the page as well. Keep that in mind as you place different content on your website.
Fonts
One important tip is to go with a CSS recommended Arial or Verdana font, all across your site for comfortable reading. Avoid having them too small or very large; a font size of 11px to 13px is respectable. Improve the readability by increasing the line spacing, and using minimal amount of text in capital letters. And definitely avoid using different fonts throughout the site.
Colors
Choose a color scheme consisting of two or three complementary colors, and keep the same on all pages. Contrast your text from the background so it is easy to read. A good website design includes a color scheme that doesn’t annoy the user. While it is not exciting a white background is always a safe choice.
Special Effects
Here are some good website design tips on special effects. Do not crowd and stuff your website with too many spinning graphics, logos, flash intros, distracting animations and sounds. Blinking or scrolling texts, animated GIFs are not always convenient to read. Pop-up windows can be annoying and can put off the visitors. Image backgrounds are very amateurish, and take time to load. Some of the largest websites in the world are focusing on simplicity, and smooth graphics, it is probably safe to follow their lead.
Links
Ensure all your links are active and working. Make the links to an external site open in a new window, let them change color as per default, so users know which links they have used, and which not.
Content
Last but not the least, always remember that content is king. All of the good website design tips in the world won’t compensate for poor content. Your website should have valuable and relevant matter, with no spelling errors, besides having a clean and professional layout, viewable at all resolutions and browsers.
Although there are many more things to consider, if you get the basics right, you will end up with an impressive website. A good website design has these basic things in place. Ask your friends and family to give you tips as well. Internet users are the best judge of what kind of website design seems user friendly and what doesn’t.