Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Nice website design ideas

By Ross Taylor

A good aesthetic appeal can never make up for a lack in performance where your website design is concerned. Most amateurs and professional webmasters belief that the more visual and audio aids they use on their website, which means slower loading time, the better it is for the visitor, when it isnt so.

Here are five important website design rules of thumb to observe which should ensure your website performs well. 1) Splash pages are not a good idea

The first pages of a website that consists of dazzling fancy displays are the splash pages. They are dazzling pages that have images with words such as welcome or click here to enter. In fact, they are just a 'pretty vase' that serves no real purpose. The most important thing is not to allow any room for users to think about leaving your site, and this is almost impossible if you are using fancy splash pages with slow loading times.

2) Avoid excessive banner advertisements, Normally you will find these at the top of the web page where they will be advertising something (not always related to the site) but sometimes they will be elsewhere on the page as well. Even the newbie to the internet have trained themselves to ignore banner ads so placing them would only waste precious real estate space. A better solution would be to add useful web contents and weave affiliate links artfully into them.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation; Navigation should be made very simple so that even a young child can understand. Leave out any form of complicated menu that is flash based or the use of multi-tiered menu: they only add to complicate the layout. Any form of complicated navigation will cause them to leave your site for good. The creation of a site map that will help visitors find what they need should be one of the first things you consider as part of your website design.

4) There should be a clear indicator showing where the user is currently on the website; When you have successfully captured their attention and enjoying the whole experience perusing your website, you will want to make them know where they are at the moment without feeling lost. This way, they can easily navigate the exact section they want. Make sure that every page has its own title and that some form of breadcrumb trail is used to track the visitors step throughout the entire website. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means they will leave!

5) Do consider the need to include audio in you website; If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on at your website. While some music can enhance the experience, even the most beautiful of sounds becomes irritating if it is played continuously. Using audios may not always be a good idea, if you have to include them be sure to allow for some form of user control such as volume or muting ability. If you use all these tricks of website design effectively, you will in time that your visitors will likely return again and again to your site.

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1 comment:

Mumtaz said...

I enjoy by reading this nice website design ideas and have some nice experience, thanks for this useful post.
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