4 of 9

Write now Article Tools

Taking the time to ensure that your site is well-designed and easy to use is one of the best ways to ensure its success. Whatever your aim; to sell products, promote music, create a community, or anything else, the same principals of good design apply.

My top tips for good design

1. Navigation Create an easy to use, clearly defined navigational structure for your site. It should be immediately apparent where the navigation bar is on the page and it should stay in the same place throughout the site. Important information should never be more than 2 clicks away, and always indicate to the user where they are within the structure of the site. A clever' or unusual navigational system will not impress your users, when it comes to navigation think clear and simple.

2. Choice of colours The background and text colours should contrast to enable the site to be easily read. Your background should not compete with the content of the page. It is generally inadvisable to add a background picture, but if you must use one, select muted tones or use a watermark. A general rule of good design is to use light colours for the background and dark colours for the text. When designing your site think white space', the more the better.

3. Keep animation to a minimum Use animation sparingly, as a rule of thumb, there should be no more than one animated object in view at a time, flashing or scrolling text is a big design no no that will put your site to the bottom of the pile.

4. Avoid excessive advertisements Aggressive pop ups, banners, and intrusive flash ads (particularly those that follow you down the page) are highly annoying and detrimental to usability and design.

5. Skip the intro page Good design is simplicity: a flashy intro, however visually stunning, will not bring you design awards. When designing your site you must think as a user thinks. A user wants to achieve their objective, whether that be buying a product or downloading a music track, in the fewest clicks possible. Keep this in mind at all times when designing your site.

6. Clear, well formatted text Reading from a computer screen is far harder on the eyes than reading from paper, to counteract this, use short paragraphs, bulleted/numbered lists, headings, and sub-headings etc. to guide your reader. Keep fonts and colours consistent across the site, and also ensure that links that change when visited and are clearly defined from normal text.

7. Cross-browser compatibility - Internet Explorer may be the most widely used browser, but it is not the only one. Browsers such as Firefox and Opera may display your page very differently from IE check your page in as many browsers as possible. If your site does not render well in all available browsers, it is not well designed however good it looks in the most popular browser.

8. Use CSS create sleek, fast-loading, well-designed pages by implementing CSS.

Follow this checklist when designing your site and you will reap the rewards with better search engine positioning, more visitors, more returning visitors, more sign-ups, and more sales - those are the merits of good design.

Examine sites that you return to again and again, I bet they have followed these rules and that's why you like them.

Learn more about this author, Katherine Wells.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Web sites: The merits of good design?
We want to hear your view. Write now!