A good web designer or web design company will work with you, your business and your ideas to come up with a great looking site. They will also offer advice about looks, content and SEO.
Here we bring you a round up of extra web design dos and don’ts to get you started on the design of your new website:

Design tips

•    Do ensure that every page of your website has something to say and something valuable to offer.
•    Don’t annoy your visitors with too many flashing, noisy, animated bits and pieces that might easily distract people from the important information on your site. Pop-up windows can be off-putting, too. Remember that sometimes simple is the best.

•    Do make it easy to navigate your website so that visitors can find what they are looking for.
•    Do minimise the number of click-thrus required to find information. Again, simple is best.
•    Don’t make your visitor scroll down lots of pages.
•    Do limit page scroll down to two screenfuls – or six to seven screenfuls for articles.
•    Do always include a link back to the home page on every page for easier navigation.
•    Don’t slow your website down with lots of big image files. Make sure that they are compressed for simpler upload.
Content tips

•    Do ensure that text is easy to read on your website. Ask you website designer to keep text width to two-thirds of the site width maximum or about 600 pixels wide.
•    Do use contrasting colours on simple or plain backgrounds. Light text on dark backgrounds isn’t always the easiest to read so make sure you ask your designer to try a few ideas before you make your decision.
•    Do make the text large enough to read. Go for something like 12 or 13pt Arial, and 11 or 12pt Verdana. Or similar.
•    Do increase the line spacing so that the text is easier to read.
•    Don’t type more than a few words in ALL CAPS. And do not use more than one exclamation mark.
•    Do use a spell checker. And ask someone to proof-read your copy. There is no excuse for poor grammar and spelling – especially as it makes your website look unprofessional.

Tags: web design, Website Design

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Website Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Posted by WebCreationUK You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.