Web Site Design Tips

Like many of you, I have been surfing the Web for many years and have visited hundreds of Web sites. I have found Web sites through search engines, e-mails, and other Web sites. Many of these Web sites have a great layout and provide very valuable, useful information. Others are more complex to navigate and don’t really help with anything.

In this post I will provide several points that I think makes a Web site great. Many of these points are common sense, and can easily be implemented.

Points to Keep in Mind

1. Easy Navigation - This is a very important point, and one that will determine whether I stay and visit more pages. It is important to ensure that your visitors can easily find their way around your site. This can be a simple menu list on the left or right side of the Web page, with the content right next to it. You can even have a menubar at the top of the Web page for more important categories.
2. Readable Text - Many sites now try to use a very small font size. The author of the Web site may be able to easily read the text, but many of the visitors may have trouble reading small fonts. I try not to go below a 10pt font equivalent on my Web pages. I also try to find a common font that is easy to read such as an Arial or Verdana font. If you use CSS, then you can set the font family and size in one file that can be easily changed if you choose.
3. Appealing Colours - I am not to keen on Web sites that have a bright pink or yellow background. I find it hard to view the Web page, let alone read the content. If I want a bright background, then I usually choose white and have black text. This is what most people are probably used to. I then add colours to my Web pages through the use of images and borders.
4. Small Image Sizes - I hate Web sites that have large images that take some time to download. I have a broadband Internet connection, but there are still sites that make take some time to download because of a large image. You should try to compress your images as much as possible to reduce the size of the images.
5. Reduce Page Size - This point goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. I like to write long posts in this blog, but if you can try to keep your page sizes to a minimum. Including the previous point you should try to break large articles into several pages, reduce the Javascript, CSS and HTML sizes. Create separate Javascript and CSS files that are included in your HTML pages, and remove excessive spaces, tabs and comments from your HTML.
6. Flash Introduction - This is a worthless and pointless page. I have seen sites that display some flash animation when you visit the Web site. If the there is a skip intro button, I usually just click that to avoid seeing the introduction.
7. Too Much Advertising - I don’t mind if people place ads on their Web sites, but sometimes they can go overboard. I have visited Web sites that have ads on what seems like every inch of a Web page. Sometimes there is so many ads, that I have trouble finding the actual page content.
8. Write Unique Content - This is probably the most important point when creating a Web site, especially for generating traffic. Spend the time to write you own unique content instead of copying someone else’s content. There are sites out there have the same content as many other Web sites. I like to read unique content that provides more and different information than other sites.
9. Ask for Opinions - Join Web sites that have the same niche as yours and then ask others to visit your Web site and provide an opinion. This can help you determine what you need to change.

Summary

This post provided many points that you can apply to your Web site to make your visitors enjoy their visit. As always, your Web site will probably change over a period of time since no Web site keeps the same look over many years.