Thursday, March 12, 2009

Nice website design ideas

By Ross Taylor

Achieving optimal performance is the most important factor in a website design. One common error found in a web design is the existence of large and heavy files that require tremendous amount of patience on the part of the visitor to actually be able to view it.

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

1) Splash pages are not a bright idea; Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. These pages use elaborate designs created with the purpose to entertain the visitor with fancy animations, brilliant photos and include welcoming words such as hello, welcome or click here to enter our website. They are merely fancy additions without any real functions at all. Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

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 should be a clear indicator showing where the user is currently on the website; When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. This way, they can head to the right information they are looking for. This can be achieved by making sure that each page has its own title and some form of trail that shows them which links they have been to and which is new for them. 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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