Saturday, March 3, 2012

FOUR TIPS FOR WEBSITE DESIGN

FOUR TIPS FOR WEBSITE DESIGN

It is easy to see the difference between a great website and a poor one. However, how to create that website can often be difficult. Here are four basic tips that will help any website developer make a site which stands out from the rest.
Create a visually stimulating environment
The key to a well-designed website is that it keeps people on the page. Often, this is best done by creating a site which is visually engaging. Color is the key to creating that appeal. Different colors attract different types of people, so it is worth doing some research into the psychology of color before choosing the palette of the website. With the right colors, people have one less reason to move onward.
Fonts also make a big difference to web design. The choice of typeset and how it contrasts to other texts, and visual objects can play an important role in the harmony of the website. Fonts should be black and in sharp contrast to the background to ensure readability. The best font size for body content on websites is 12 or 14 points, otherwise readers might find the content, difficult or annoying to read.
Ensure loading time is short
Some websites are great to use, and include some amazing features, but people won’t really know because they got bored during the page loading time. While Internet speeds are increasing rapidly, users’ attention spans are diminishing even faster. A quickly loading webpage is more likely to attract viewers than one that takes a long time to start.
Ways to keep a page loading down is to reduce the size of images and use of graphics to the site. Flash and JavaScript are also major load time culprits, which should be kept to a minimum in order to ensure a snappy feel.
Make navigation easy
Navigation between different elements of the website is an important way of keeping people on site. Here, simplicity is really important; visitors should be able to understand the navigation tools quickly and intuitively. A good rule of thumb when mapping out the site is to ensure that all important content is within three clicks away from any other point or web page. This ensures that people feel the least resistance to browsing, and can enjoy the site without issue.
The balance between text and graphics
The use of text in websites both provides the content and the webpage SEO rank. However, graphics can also draw in users and increase page views and can create a visually balanced website. The use of graphics to space out text in web content is really important; it makes the page less boring and promotes interest. Furthermore, people often find that video also delivers content in an engaging way. However, be sure that the sizes of the graphics and videos are small, to keep the page load times low.
Creating a rich and powerful website takes some planning and good design. The tips mentioned above are good starting points to putting together a well-designed and visually attractive website.

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