Saturday, March 7, 2009

Nice website design ideas

By Ross Taylor

When it comes to your website design, never compromise efficiency for a beautiful design. The existence of large, slow loading flash files on some website shows that some webmaster do not require the basic understanding if what constitutes an optimally designed website.

Here are some tips to help with your website design projects in the future.

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) Make the navigation as simple as possible; Keep navigation simple so that the youngest user can use it. 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. Remember, if users find it hard to navigate, they will leave very soon after landing on your home page. Your website design should include the construction a sitemap that will make it easy for them to find what they want.

4) There needs to be a clear indicator where the user is on the website; You will need to have a sitemap to facilitate the user to be in control. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. 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. Any type of confusion drives your visitors away.

5) Do not use audio; Your favorite tune may be repulsive to some visitors, so use music sparingly. A sound file should not be played continuously it can be irritating on the user. When adding audio to your website, make sure to include some form of user control that allows them to mute or lower the sound as required. If you wish for the visitors to return to your site, learn to apply all these website design rules and you can reap the benefits of long term traffic.

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