A well designed website will help your users easily find what they are looking for and will make your business look more professional and stand out against the competition. Designing a website from the beginning with Search Engines and your users in mind will help your website to be a success.

Here are some practical tips and examples:

Simplify, simplify, simplify. What is the most important thing you want to tell the visitor about on each page? If a web site has too much information on a page, it ends up being confusing to the user. Additionally, Search Engines actually prefer that you separate topics out onto their own pages, as it sees this as more relevant
to the users.

Visually highlight important calls to action such as your telephone number and email address. Consider using icons to highlight important items on a page. Have secondary interest items such as joining a newsletter or submitting your details for a free ebook.

Set up an email newsletter – this is a inexpensive and environmentally-friendly way to keep in touch with your customers, notifying them of new products, sales, events, or to send them special discounts for being newsletter subscribers.

First impressions are very important. When people arrive at your web site, you have about five seconds to convince them to stay. On your homepage, keep it simple, communicate what you do and what makes your business different.

Be personal. Use photographs of people and testimonials from happy clients to build trust. Make sure you include your address and phone numbers on your contact page. People like being able to easily contact you and know where you are located.

Use maps. Buyers may not be familiar with where you are located. It’s also helpful to have a custom map designed for your site to indicate landmarks that might not be found on Google maps. However, it is also important to link to a Google or Yahoo map so that customers can easily get directions to your locations.

Make sure to do your keyword research before you start building your site. After discovering what users are searching, you should then choose 6 to 10 phrases you want to rank for and try to incorporate them naturally into your page titles and headlines.

Make sure to organize your web site so that it is easy for your users to navigate and find what they are looking for. Clear and logical navigation will help users navigate your site and help them to understand what you do and how you can meet their needs.

Use web conventions. For example, using underlined text when linking and make your logo link back to your homepage. People have certain expectations driven by their experiences of other websites. You need to understand what these are and make sure you accommodate them in your design.

Limit your color palette. Professional looking websites tend to use 2-4 colors. This site uses blue and white. Use color to help highlight important features on your web site.

A website can easily be referred to as the representation of a company or a person on the Internet. It is through a website that people will get the first impression about a firm. And when people visit your website, they come with certain expectations ‘ conscious expectations (information they are looking for) and sub-conscious expectations (visual appeal, ease of navigation etc). So, here are some tips and guidelines that will help you meet such expectations:

1)Know your audience

There are two aspects that are influenced by this guideline’ the design (including the layout, graphics, colours etc) and the content (articles and other written material). For example, if you are designing a website for children, you might choose cartoons and a colourful impression instead of a more serene look that is better fit for corporate websites. Similarly, the style, tone and examples used in your content will be dependent on type of audience too.

2)Navigation

Ok, so you have done the audience analysis and have all the right content and graphics etc on your website; but if people (your website visitors) are not able to reach that information easily, it would be of no use at all. Hence, it is very important that your website is easy to navigate through. No page should be more than three clicks away. Also, there should be a consistent pattern that you should follow for navigation across your website. Another good practice is to have a navigation bar on the top (and bottom) or on the sides of your web pages.

3)Response time

In today’s fast paced world, people don’t want to wait for anything and it would be unreasonable to expect them to wait for your website to load. Hence, it is important that your web pages load quickly otherwise your visitors might go away even before your website loads. A good web designer will ensure that the graphics and multi-media are lightweight so that the website loads quickly. However, with faster internet connections, this aspect of web design has assumed a lesser importance than what it used to be in previous times; but still, this is a very important aspect.

4)Cross browser compatibility

As technology progresses and technology providers wrestle for supremacy, new software products (and upgrades) are being launched all the time. And browsers haven’t been left out in this race for power. This means that there are a whole lot of browsers that are available and are being used across the world by various groups of people; and, though most browsers comply with W3C norms, they still do their own thing too. So, your website could look and work differently in different browsers. Hence, cross browser compatibility is a very important aspect of website designing. A good way to ensure that most of your stuff works across browsers is to validate your website using the W3C mark-up validation service.

5)Consistency

Your website design should be consistent in all respects ‘ layout of various web pages, the colour combinations, graphics, navigation, language etc. Most people will take the cue from what they see on your home page (or your main page). Inconsistent website design will confuse your visitors and will lead them away from your website.

If you follow these 5 basic tips / guidelines, you can never go wrong with your web design. So, make the best use of these guidelines.

Did you know that millions of potential customers surf the internet daily? Do you want to attract them to your website and improve business revenues? Are you worried about potential flaws in your present website design? Do you want to stand out from the clutter of websites and become a successful web entrepreneur? If yes, use the following tips to beat the competition and win over the customers.

Tip 1: Cut Out the Counters

Counters show the number of users who have visited your website. They give your website an immature and unprofessional look. New websites should be especially careful about counters because a small number of visitors can make you look ineffective and discourage website usage.

Tip 2: Be Relevant

Add only those features to your website that are relevant and related to your business. Adding a feature that pleases you but does not carry any meaning for your customers is a waste of time and bandwidth.

Tip 3: Keep a check on multimedia

Be judicious in the use of bandwidth-consuming audio and video features. Though they add appeal to your website, they can considerably increase the time your web pages take to load, irritating customers and hindering usage of your website.

Tip 4: Steer Clear of Flashing Content

Avoid using flashing icons and text as they distract visitors and be detrimental to your website image. Though some web designers suggest that they add appeal to your website, always focus on impressing customers through products and services instead of computer effects.

Tip 5: Informative Page Titles

Use clear and to-the-point page titles. Though some readers may appreciate clever and witty titles, most prefer simplicity. Visitors see web page title in search results; clear effective titles can significantly increase the traffic coming to your website.

Tip 6: Unethical Tactics

Be wary of web designers who promise top rankings on popular search engines within weeks. They are often inclined to using unethical ways of search engine optimization and violate common search engine algorithms. Though these tactics can get your website high rankings for the first few weeks, your website will usually be penalized as soon as the violations are detected. Hire professional, experienced web designers to prevent use of unethical web building ways.

Tip 7: Blog

Blogs can be a great addition to your website but be careful when using them. If you include a blog on your website to connect to your customers, then post regular updates, and timely responses to customer queries. In the absence of these, your customers will get bored and turn their attention to other websites. Try to engage customers in dialogues through daily or weekly posts.

Tip 8: Introductory Advertisements

Putting an advertisement on the first page before your true content appears can greatly annoy customers. Though some web designers advocate that displaying the ad benefits your business and attracts customer attention but these pages, more often than not, discourage website usage and negatively affect your reputation.

Tip 9: Unobtrusive advertising

Do not clutter your web pages with advertisements. Your advertisements should be relevant to your business and positioned in a way that does not distract customers. Also, keep a check on pop-ups as they can irritate customers and hinder usage of your site.

Tip 10: Quick and Easy Search

Design your web pages in a way that facilitates quick and easy navigation to desired information. If customers have to browse through several pages before reaching their search items, they will get bored and turn their attention to other websites. The faster your customers can navigate through your website and find what they are looking for, the more likely they will become frequent visitors and buyers.

Use these web design tips to turn your website into a profit center.

There are many webmasters who are afraid of large amounts of traffic visiting their site each and every month. There’s nothing wrong with that, however, as visitors to your site are important, but you also want to have a nicely designed site so that those visitors will stick around. You can offer unique products and spend time and money on advertising, but it will all be for nothing if your visitors don’t stick around long enough. Many webmasters ignore this factor because their focus is on how to reach their target audience instead of focusing on their site’s actual design. If your site looks unprofessional, it may leave a bad impression with your visitors which is exactly what you don’t want. The following are a set of web design tips you’ll want to keep in mind.

Don’t make the biggest mistake some webmasters make and make sure you have a fast loading website. There are lots of sites online that take too long to load, which people generally don’t have the time to wait for. To solve this problem, the best web design tip is to use more text and fewer graphics. It’s just as easy as that. Loud graphics/animations can slow the load time of a website considerably, even though they may be alright on the eyes. For that reason, only use graphics if it’s absolutely needed. If your site takes longer than 10 seconds to load, there’s a good chance you’re losing about half your traffic. A good way to see if your site loads fast is to check its performance by using a slower connection, and then you can just cut down on the graphics if it takes too long to load.

Navigation is another thing you’ll want to keep in mind. Good web design and smooth navigation should always go together. Visitors should be able to go to your site and easily find exactly what they want. For example, don’t push your visitors on clicking a number of links or scrolling to the bottom of the page, etc. Give them a clear cut road map detailing how your site is structured and how they can navigate your site. Some people may find your site through the search engines, so keep in mind that not every visitor comes to your site through your home page. That’s why it’s important to have your page’s title along with links on the top or bottom that lead to important pages of your site like your home page, contact page, about page, etc.

The copy on your site is the most significant part, so it’s very important that visitors can read it. You don’t want to ever put red text on a black background. Stick to black text on a white background instead, as that always works. The easier it is to read the copy on your site, the better it is. You could have all the traffic in the world, but if nobody gets around to reading your copy it won’t help.

Once you know what you’re doing, you’ll soon see that web design isn’t a difficult subject to understand at all.

Just always keep in mind that you’ll get better success in the long run as long as you put a lot of effort into your web design efforts.

Web design is a unique skill to use the latest techniques to create a presentable website that people can access online. Web design entails using text, images, graphics and other elements to give a more professional look to the website. There are many reasons why high quality web design should be your primary focus in case you happen to be creating a site. Just like most people surf from channel to channel while watching television, most people surfing the web tend to jump from site to site very quickly. For this reason, you’ll want a web design that really grabs the attention of all visitors. A site that is poorly designed is likely to give viewers the wrong impression and that could affect your brand image. To a large extent, the tips in this article will help you with your web design.

Keeping it as simple as possible and staying away from clutter is a simple web design tip to remember. It will pay off better in the long run to stay away from the hustle bustle that comes with using cool Photoshop effects and flash based animation, even though using these tools can be very fun. When you design a site that’s confusing and cluttered, you’re simply going to put off your site’s visitors. Instead, you’ll want to create an appealing design for your website so that the information is organized in such a way so as to allow visitors to easily find what they’re looking for. In addition, make sure you keep a good balance between text and visual since it’s not right if the text overpowers the visual, and vice versa. You won’t want to forget to optimize all images so that your site loads as quickly as possible. Including visuals on your website do much more than just improve the aesthetics of your site. You’d do well to put in the work required to use visuals that communicate the right message to all of your site’s visitors. You can use colors to both present your company’s image and also to communicate with all of the visitors that come to your site. A site about “going green” would likely use the color green majorly and distribute it around, for example. If your site is about selling kids toys, to cite another example, you would use bright, solid colors to represent that subject. There are quite a few ways the use of visuals can help present your website in a positive way. They can even be used for the purpose of highlighting, like when you use buttons to highlight certain links; which will have the effect of making your page easier to navigate. Aside from this, using visuals such as arrows or bold text, for instance, can be used for the purpose of sending visitors to a separate page.

Always remember that spacing out your content will be better as you don’t want a lot of unreadable text all in one spot. Make sure you try to keep your content in small chunks that are completely readable and also to use lots of white space between the text you use. In general, people read differently on the web when you compare it to how they read offline. You have to make sure you create your content so that it’s more scannable. So, if you have always wanted a website that stands out but you never knew what steps to follow, now you know every step required. Focus on small web design tips like these and you will definitely go a long way.

The purpose of web design is not just for making a website attractive, but practically useful. The incorporation of the usability of a website helps users find the information they need when they want. The usability of a website increases the value of companies. So many companies spend thousands of dollars on usability testing and research. However, there is no need to spend on usability experts and expensive equipment to achieve the ease of use. Read this article and usability are six top tips for web design.

Search the site include

Search the site on a website is a very useful for users. Often, users seeking the site search option on a web site to find items not found in the first attempt. Place one of these options at the top of web page design of your website. For easy operation, make it 27 characters wide.

Attach site maps

Site maps are the structural representation of architecture and web pages, which meliorate web page navigation and is also useful in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). Site maps can be in any way a web design, document or web page with a hierarchical list of the pages of a website.

Motto is obligatory

Slogan represents the philosophy and objectives of a business. Without a theme that is difficult to retain visitors longer on the page. According to statistics, websites get only eight seconds to capture the attention of visitors and help them navigate through the inside pages. Therefore, it should be included on the first page of a website.

Avoid extensive use of graphics

Excessive use of graphic elements can be distracting to visitors. A web design is intended to improve the design of web pages and not to decorate with a complex design. As far as usability is concerned, keep your web design as simple as possible.

Convincing with meaningful feedback

Comments on a website is a way to communicate with users to help them understand the error or the cause that is restricting their access to the site. Therefore, to convince users meaningful information. For example, if an error page instead of writing ‘Error’ write an error message for users to understand the problem causing the error and the actions they can perform more.

Do not force your visitors

The user must have the freedom to do what he wants. Do not force your users to complete any operation on a web design, such as registration, filling out forms, navigation, etc. to cancel any operation at the half way if you want. Rather a guide specific workflow. Also, avoid the use of Javascript links, since it breaks the flow of work. Also, make sure that the visited links change color, because it can also break the navigation design.

Web design is a relatively new line of work.

The Internet was started in the mid-80s, give or take a couple years then it’s safe to say that web design only really began to take off during the mid or late 90s. Back then the Internet was too primitive for web design to even matter. Most websites were just a bunch of texts clumped up together. But time has change, and it has changed for the better. If there’s anything you should be doing on your free time to make it more productive, you should be learning web design. You could keep it as a hobby or turn it into a career. What more can you ask?

On that note, here are a handful of basic web design tips for those looking to learn this new breed of art:

1. The www syndrome. Most web addresses start with the compulsory www prefix. Here’s a tip for amateurs ‘ make sure your web pages work with or without this subdomain. Even the latest version of Google Chrome omits this redundant string.

2. Avoid dashes. Dashes look good on classical literature, but not on domain names. Use easy to read and type web addresses such as www.youraddresshere.com instead of www.your-address-here.com.

3. Specific location. A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is essential if you’re looking to target a specific geographic region. Something like edu.kr in Korea or co.us for US residents.

4. Residency. Some ccTLD addresses require the owner of the website to be a resident of that country. If you don’t live there, you should just ignore the ccTLD to avoid violating the registrar’s agreement.

5. Fake advertising. Some web hosting services boast unlimited resources and bandwidth. This is NOT true. Everything in this world is limited, especially resources. Make sure you’re signing with a legitimate web hosting company or you might find yourself running on the short end of the stick.

6. Freeware. You don’t need expensive Microsoft or Adobe software to design a great website. There are tons of open source and free products floating around out there on the Internet. Make use of them. They can do the same job, just about, at a fraction or even no cost at all.

7. Avoid distractions. An organized and well-kept working environment goes a long way in improving your overall work ethic. Take out all the clutter away from your desk. The less clutter the eyes can see, the less distractions, the more productivity you’ll be able to put into your time.

8. Set realistic expectations. You should always be realistic on how soon or how late you’ll be able to complete a certain web design project. It’s tempting to say, “Oh, I can get this done for you in no time. Tomorrow at the latest,” when the reality is, it would take you at least two to three days without compromising quality.

9. Keep learning. Web design is an evolving craft. There’s always something to learn, something to improve on. Keep this in mind all the time.

Take note of these tips and you should be an advanced-level web designer in no time.

Web design is a relatively new trade. But even so ‘ take note ‘ this new trade is all the rage these days. Every smart person looking to set up his or her own business knows that a business website is important, even crucial, to success.

As an aspiring web designer, what do you do with this information? You get better. Everybody starts somewhere. As an amateur web designer, I suggest you follow these simple tips to help you design a high quality and professional-looking website.

1. Make Navigation Easy
Driving visitors to your website is one thing, keeping those visitors glued to your website is another thing. Amateur web designers should take note that link navigation plays a huge role in keeping visitors from leaving your website.

Ask yourself, what’s the first thing visitors look for when they open your homepage? What other subjects might interest them to prevent them from moving on to another website?

2. Polished Layout Design
Visitors tend to stay longer on websites that looks polished and makes effective use of white space ‘ think Yahoo! and Google.

Also I know it’s tempting to use unique-looking fonts that you don’t see everywhere, but at the risk of your website not working on some computers or web browsers. Are you willing to take that risk?

3. Start Learning CSS Programming
Table-based websites are old, they’re a thing of the past, and you know the modern Internet age doesn’t deal well with things that are old.

Modern web designers are slowly trying to transition to programming using pure CSS. CSS is a lot more accessible, has high reusability, and makes for generally smaller file sizes.

4. Minimize Loading Times
Loading time is very important to a website. Visitors tend to stay away from websites that take more than a couple seconds to show everything on the screen, especially those with slower Internet speeds because, hey, not every lives in South Korea.

As an amateur web designer, make sure your website loads as quickly as possible. Do this by reducing the amount of visuals and Flash content on your website to keep the general file size low.

5. Account For Different Screen Resolutions
Different computers are connected to different monitors, and each of these monitors have different screen resolutions. You need to account for all these when designing a website. Or else what looked like a work of art on a 1440 x 900 resolution turns out to be a complete mess when viewed on a 1280 x 800 resolution monitor.

6. Make Sure Your Website Is Browser-Compatible
A great website means nothing if it isn’t compatible with popular web browsers, mainly Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Apple Safar, Opera, etc. You need to make sure as an amateur web designer that your website will run smoothly on these browsers which, when put together, constitute 90%+ of the world’s web browsers.

Web design is easy if you’ve got the fundamentals down. Follow these simple tips and you’ll be designing great websites in no time.

When it comes to designing a website there are some very simple things to do and some very simple things not to do to make it a successful design and achieve what it is being created for. Funny then, that too many designers still don’t do what they should ‘ and do what they shouldn’t!

Follow these tips to get started on your cheap website design ‘ that doesn’t look cheap!

Fonts

Always choose legible fonts for the body of your content. Most popular and well designed websites use Arial or Verdana for a very good reason ‘ they are easy to read and will render correctly on all computers and mobile devices. The fact that they are Sans Serif is also important.

You can be a little more adventurous with your headings, but you’re still going to want to stick to something like Trebuchet or Georgia. The latter is Serif but if used big enough, as headings often are, this won’t cause a problem.

Line spacing is also important. Have your paragraphs too cramped and it will be difficult to read, too wide apart and the page will look ugly as well! Imagine you’re reading a book, the line spacing is usually 1.5 lines. You want to achieve something similar on screen.

Also consider line length. This will tie in with the width of your website as well (aim for 900-1000 pixels and TEST it), as your line length will need to fit within it. However, it should never be more than 600 pixels. Newspapers and magazines use thin columns and short lines to make it easier to finish one line fast and find the next. In web design you don’t need to have such short lines, but the principle applies nonetheless.

Images

Images are an integral part of a website design and should be used to enhance the content. They don’t to overpower the words or distract from what you want your visitor to do ( for example, sign up to a newsletter, buy a product, make contact with you).

That’s why you shouldn’t use background images or animated gifs, as they are a distraction and often off putting to those visiting your site. They give a bad impression.

In addition, they slow down how long it takes for your site to load. You only have a few seconds to catch someone’s attention ‘ make it count and don’t waste their time by having long page load times thanks to pointless images!

That’s also a very good reason to compress all your images before you use them. There are several programs around that can reduce your image file sizes to the bare minimum.

Additional Page Elements

Avoid pop up windows, links the same colour as the text, opening internal links in new windows or tabs and scrolling or flashing text.

Always put a link to your homepage on every page ‘ and don’t limit it to a clickable logo, put the word on there too, as not everyone knows to click on the logo. Also include your navigation menu on every page so your visitors can get around your site quickly and easily.

All very simple and seemingly obvious tips for you to use in your next cheap website design!

If you are looking to set up a website for your business or products then there are some basic rules of thumb that you should follow when designing if you are hoping that it will help you to generate revenue. The most effective website designs will be the product of several well thought out strategies who’s goal is to drive traffic to the site. With that in mind here are a few simple to follow guidelines you should follow when putting your site together.

Any textual content which is displayed on your site must be well written, informative, exhaustive and presented in a manner which is easy to understand and not cluttered with technical jargon. As an example one of the big disadvantages of a high street shop over an internet shop is that the product can be directly accessed by the shoppers so they can see and examine it first hand. To overcome this shortfall, an internet shop should concisely describe it’s products in a manner which highlights the benefits the user is likely to derive from the purchase.

The overall look and feel of your website is extremely important as the first impression it makes will determine whether your visitors will stick around and continuie browsing. If the interface isn’t immediately obvious or it doesn’t appear intuitive to use then the user will unlikely be motivated to read further. Any colours an images must be inkeeping with the overall theme of the business and should not detract or interfere with the presentation of the text.

For every page that exists on the site there should be a brief summary of the information contained on that page along with a page title that concisely describes the page’s content. Not only will this make the page easier for the user to read, but it will help the search engines to determine what your site is about and index the page appropriately.

Just as information should be presented clearly on your site, the manner in which the user can navigate the various pages on the site should be equally clear. If for any reason a visitor has difficulty in finding their way round your site then you will run the risk of visitors simply leaving your site. It is important to remember that the attention span of people browsing in the internet is extremely short and if they are unable to grasp the working of your site immediately then you may as well not have a website.

With this in mind it is important that your website should load quickly. Only put as much text on your page as you need, try to keep the filesize of images down and try to avoid using large flash files.

Finally, make sure that you incorporate any contact details in the design of the site. You could have hundreds of people visiting the site each day, however if they have no means of contacting you directly then you will be shooting yourself in the foot!