Thursday, August 27, 2009

Few 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

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 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) Audios are a bad idea; If you want your visitors to stay a long time and read the contents, do not irritate em with your audio. One can get irritated by continuous sounds being played over and over again. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it - volume or muting controls would work fine. By using this information on website design you will find visitors to your site stay much longer and will return in the future.

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