Your Web Site Should Be Easy to Read
The most important rule in web design is that your web site
should be easy to read. What does this mean? You should choose
your text and background colors very carefully. You don't want
to use backgrounds that obscure your text or use colors that are
hard to read. Dark-colored text on a light-colored background is
easier to read than light-colored text on a dark-colored
background.
You also don't want to set your text size too small (hard to
read) or too large (it will appear to shout at your visitors).
All capitalized letters also give the appearance of shouting at
your visitors.
Keep the alignment of your main text to the left, not centered.
Center-aligned text is best used in headlines. You want your
visitors to be comfortable with what they are reading, and most
text (in the West) is left aligned.
Your Web Site Should Be Easy to Navigate
All of your hyperlinks should be clear to your visitors. Graphic
images, such as buttons or tabs, should be clearly labeled and
easy to read. Your web graphic designer should select the
colors, backgrounds, textures, and special effects on your web
graphics very carefully. It is more important that your
navigational buttons and tabs be easy to read and understand
than to have "flashy" effects.
Link colors in your text should be familiar to your visitor (blue
text usually indicates an unvisited link and purple or maroon
text usually indicates a visited link), if possible. If you elect
not to use the default colors, your text links should be
emphasized in some other way (boldfaced, a larger font size, set
between small vertical lines, or a combination of these). Text
links should be unique -- they should not look the same as any
other text in your web pages. You do not want people clicking on
your headings because they think the headings are links.
Your visitors should be able to find what they are looking for in
your site within three clicks. If not, they are very likely to
click off your site as quickly as they clicked on.
Your Web Site Should Be Easy to Find
How are your visitors finding you online? The myth, "If I build a
web site, they will come," is still a commonly held belief among
companies and organizations new to the Internet. People will not
come to your web site unless you promote your site both online
and offline.
Web sites are promoted online via search engines, directories,
award sites, banner advertising, electronic magazines (e-zines)
and links from other web sites. If you are not familiar with any
of these online terms, then it is best that you have your site
promoted by an online marketing professional. (See our section,
What to Look for in an Online Marketing Company, for some
general guidelines.)
Web sites are promoted offline via the conventional advertising
methods: print ads, radio, television, brochures, word-of-mouth,
etc. Once you have created a web site, all of your company's
printed materials including business cards, letterhead,
envelopes, invoices, etc. should have your URL printed on them.
Your Web Pages' Layout Should Be Consistent Throughout the
Site
Just as in any document formatted on a word processor or as in
any brochure, newsletter, or newspaper formatted in a desktop
publishing program, all graphic images and elements, typefaces,
headings, and footers should remain consistent throughout your
web site. Consistency and coherence in any document, whether it
be a report or a set of web pages, project a professional image.
For example, if you use a drop shadow as a special effect in
your bullet points, you should use drop shadows in all of your
bullets. Link-colors should be consistent throughout your web
pages. Typefaces and background colors, too, should remain the
same throughout your site.
Color-coded web pages, in particular, need this consistency.
Typefaces, alignment in the main text and the headings,
background effects, and the special effects on graphics should
remain the same. Only the colors should change.
Overall Web Page Size Should be 75K or Less
Studies have indicated that visitors will quickly lose interest
in your web site if the majority of a page does not download
within 15 seconds. (Artists' pages should have a warning at
the top of their pages.) Even web sites that are marketed to
high-end users need to consider download times. Sometimes,
getting to web site such as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems is so
difficult and time consuming that visitors will often try to
access the sites during non-working hours from their homes. If
your business does not have good brand name recognition, it
is best to keep your download time as short as possible.
A good application of this rule is adding animation to your site.
Sure, animation looks "cool" and does initially catch your eye,
but animation graphics tend to be large files. Test the download
time of your pages first. If the download time of your page is
relatively short and the addition of animation does not
unreasonably increase the download time of your page, then and
ONLY then should animation be a consideration.
Finally, before you consider the personal preferences of your
web page design, you should consider all of the above rules
FIRST and adapt your personal preferences accordingly. The
attitude "I don't like how it looks" should always be secondary
to your web site's function. Which is more important: creative
expression corporate image or running a successful business?
Shari Thurow is the Webmaster/Marketing Manager for Grantastic
Designs, a graphic design studio specializing in web site design
and print design. She has been designing and marketing web sites
since 1995. Shari's areas of expertise include HTML coding,
search engine optimization, and web graphics design. Her
services are outsourced to various companies throughout the U.S.
shari@grantasticdesigns.com
Grant Crowell is the CEO and founder of Grantastic Designs
(http://www.grantasticdesigns.com). Grant has over 8 years of
print design experience and specializes in illustration, photo
retouching, and web graphics design. His graphic design services
are outsourced to various companies throughout the U.S.
grant@grantasticdesigns.com
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