The Key to Effective Web Site Design



Get Web Design Tips and Tricks on mps-web-design.com. The Key to Effective Web Site Design topic will increase your understanding on Web Design Tips and Tricks. We at mps-web-design.com only provide news, articles, information in Web Design Tips and Tricks. Web Design Tips and Tricks at mps-web-design.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

This article may be published electronically or in print, free of charge, without alteration to any content and the resource box at the end of the article is included in it's entirety without alteration. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE WEB SITE DESIGN by Breal Web Design ************************************************************ The key to effective web site design is good planning. Without planning and organisation, you will end up with chaos. Once you have a design plan, content is the next consideration. This applies equally to new and existing web sites.

To create your plan for a new or existing site, sit down and consider what your site will achieve. Get out a piece of paper and a pen, draw a circle in the middle and mark it 'home'. Draw boxes connected by lines radiating out from the centre circle and mark them with each of the main areas your site will cover. Don't forget a site map if your site has more than 8 or 9 pages. Repeat this process for each secondary circle until you've planned your site. If you've already got a site, do this exercise and include every page on the web site.

Good navigation is vital and poor navigation leads to visitor frustration. Once you've created your plan, you can create logical navigational links. Make up to 8 main navigational links to use on all pages of your site. You don't want to confuse your site visitors with too many options. You can offer more choices later, as your customers drill down into your site.

If you have lots of links, then consider creating pages that list each group of links instead. For example, Click Art Gallery, (www.clickart-gallery.com) has hundreds of pages within the site, but only 8 main links. Two of the main links are to sub navigation pages. The first is an 'arts' page. This lists all the pages on the site only relating to the displayed artworks. The second is a 'services' page that lists all the extra services on the site.

Once your navigation is taken care of, it's time to focus on content. Common questions we hear are, how much information should I put on a page and how big is a web page?

The size of a web page, and therefore the content are dependent on the type of information being provided. However, many site visitors don't want to read a condensed version of 'War and Peace' on a single page. See if you can logically break the content down into easy to read chunks.

Unless your site is an art gallery, keep images to a minimum. Try using simple 16 colour GIF images as they're small and fast loading.

The following list gives you a few good design tips to consider when preparing your web site content.

-> Do make your text easy to read. -> Do use short sentences. -> Do break up your text into paragraphs. -> Do use bullets and lists to make your point. -> Create textual variation with heading size and colour but don't make your text too small to read easily. -> Be consistent - consistency creates a professional image. -> Don't use fancy fonts except as 16 colour GIFs as your masterpiece may not display correctly on every browser. -> Don't use weird text colour/background colour combinations. -> Stick to one colour for each font type (eg Headings - blue, sub headings - teal, main text - black) -> Don't be too adventurous with changing hyperlink colours. Many people, especially newbies, expect blue, underlined links. -> Leave white space to create a 'clean' looking design. -> Ask two or three friends (who's opinions you value) how they find your site navigation and layout.

You can also experiment with cascading style sheets (CSS) and bold, italics or even highlighted words and phrases. For example, this code inserted into your document will create a yellow highlight over the word 'Highlight'. Highlight

All the preparation may seem like a whole lot of hard work, but it will pay off. Over the lifetime of your web site, good layout design and navigation allow your site to grow without creating you massive headaches.



Hot* Brand New: AdwareAlert. - Our Highet Converting/Paying Designs Ever! Easy Ppc Sales! Also try SpywareRemover.com. Now with Msn/Goog/Yhoo Tracking!
Asthma & Allergy Cure -Drug Free! - Never suffer again with this safe, proven, highly effective asthma & allergy treatment $24.86 + per sale High Conversion rate.

When it comes to wireframing it’s time to branch out. Too many of us wireframe two or three versions of a page template before giving up. A better approach is to sketch out as many different versions as possible before narrowing the selection down. Producing large numbers of wireframes does not need to be time [...]


Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79


More Articles:


1. Shameless Flashers - Using Flash Tools To Create Spectacular Websites By John Deprice
Flash is a powerful technology that can help you create spectacular websites, tutorials and demos. Find out which inexpensive tools are available to you that have very low learning curve.SWFTextSWF Text is an author tool of Flash text animation. It embraces 150+ text effects and 20+ background effects, and users may also customize all the properties of a Flash, including font, text color, and layout, etc. With SW FText, a user without any experience of Flash development can easily create a F…

2. Web Accessibility and Your Business
One of the things I find I’m most often fighting with my peers and competitors is the need for your website to be accessible. An Accessible website is a website that caters to the needs of disabled individuals and people using alternative web browsing methods like third party browsers, PDA’s, etc. As a business owner, it is important to have a website that meets at least the minimum Web Accessibility Standards. If your website is accessible you stand to benefit from:*Increased Market Share and A…

3. Get help from colors
The Red Cross is one of the worldwide sectors helping unfortunate victims of calamities and tragedies. They thrive on donations made by different organizations as they are non-profiting groups. These groups consist of volunteers going into relief operations and providing blood supply to the people. These and more are the challenges they face as they go about their duty.As the Red Cross constantly needs any contributions, donations and financial aid, they have to rely on manuals, posters and broc…

4. What makes a good Printing Company?
When you are printing loads of posters, flyers, business cards and other stuffs, you might be shocked and even lose your patience. Sometimes you will get confused with the quality and standards such as paper quality and type. Color application is a bit handy and needs touch. All colors must have harmony from the text to the background so that the structure is not messy. These are some things and points to consider in keeping up with your printing needs. There are times you are not organized well…