Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Rules for Proper Website Design

By Jerry Hammond

You need to pay attention to ensure every minute detail in your website design is observed to ensure peak performance of your site. Many new webmasters feel the need to entertain their visitor by adding expensive, fancy flash works that can actually hamper the optimal performance of their site.

Follow these basic rules for website design when creating your site and you can be assured of an optimally designed website you can be proud of.

1) Do not be tempted into using splash pages

Splash pages makes up the first impression people have of a website. These are elaborately fancy pages with lavish designs and images along with words such as "welcome to our website Usually, they are pages of elaborate graphics that includes words such as "welcome or "click here to enter the site. These are merely distractions that can divert attention away from the purpose of your website. Visitors will be more likely to leave your first page without waiting for the exceptionally slow loading time due to the heavy graphics used.

2) Use any form of banner advertisements sparing

Some sites have a number of these advertising banners displayed around the page but the most prominent place is at the top. Banner ad tends to be ignored by most web surfers so it is a total majority of the web surfers so they would a total waste of your website space. Instead add useful contents and add your affiliate links skillfully into the body of the text so that it would seem like a natural part of your text and not an advertisement.

3) The best sites are always easy to navigate

The best navigation would one that a young child can understand. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus. Any form of complicated navigation will cause them to leave your site for good. Your website design should include the construction a sitemap that will make it easy for them to find what they want.

4) Make it clear where the user is at the moment

Give them a clear view of where they are now and how to get to where they want to be. This way, they can head to the right information they are looking for. Ensure every page of your website has its title and a tracking system is used to allow visitors to see where they have been and where they are. Any type of confusion drives your visitors away.

5) Make it a point to avoid using audio.

To make your visitors stay longer, avoid the use of excessive music. Sound files should be used sparingly. It may be a cool thing to include some music but do give your users some form of control such as muting ability or volume control. 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. - 15615

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