Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Great website design ideas

By Ross Taylor

When it comes to your website design, never compromise efficiency for a beautiful design. The existence of large, slow loading flash files on some website shows that some webmaster do not require the basic understanding if what constitutes an optimally designed website.

Here are some tips to help with your website design projects in the future.

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) Overuse of banner advertisements is a big mistake; The most common place for these large advertising banners to be placed is close to the page header but the bottom of the page is also quite popular too. 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. There is a better way to add contents instead of using banner is by giving them useful information and then add their affiliate links so that they would seem natural.

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.

About the Author:

No comments: