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The_8_Most_Important_Website_Design_Principles
| The 8 Most Important Website Design Principles
Building an Innovative and Effective Website, by making full
use of available technologies, is crucial for the future success
of your current or future online business. There are literally
1000's of great ideas out there, but finding the right ones and
applying them to your website, is where the real trick lies.
Applying the best tips, tools and other design principles to
your website, can bring you untold success on the internet. At
the same time, using powerful and innovative ideas in the design
and development stages of your website, will level the playing
field for your business, and raise it's competitive edge on the
internet.
We have been doing web development for more than 7 years now,
and during this time, many important design and development
principles have come to light. Don't waste valuable time by
making the same mistakes many other web designers and webmasters
do. The following 8 powerful website design principles will
assist in helping you make the right choices for your online
business :
1. Do-it-yourself OR outsourcing ?
Before you start compiling your new website, you have to
establish your skill level to tackle the specific project. If
you have sufficient html understanding, a good idea of graphics
and colors, plus fair writing skills, you mostly can do the
website design yourself. If, however, you don't have a fair
understanding of html, it would be advisable to outsource.
2. Dynamic vs. Static web pages
Do you want your site to be static, i.e.. no input from
visitors, or dynamic, i.e.. fully interactive, with visitors
being able to log on, take part in forums, post information, etc
? Many new and fantastic scripting languages are available to
make your site more dynamic and bring it to life.
3. Web Site Title vs. Domain
Before registering a domain for your site, take some time to
think of related words or names that best describes your
business. Compile a few possibilities and then check for
availability on the internet. The best ones would normally
already be "taken", but innovative thinking can get you very far
!! When compiling you main page, use this domain name and extend
it to your website's main page title tag. This is step 1 in
getting future good search engine rankings.
4. Build your site around important keywords
When building the content part of your site, remember to include
a fair dose of important keywords and phrases that best describe
your business. These keywords, the words and phrases people use
when searching for relevant information on the internet, should
also be extended to all the important tags of every web page of
your site. Be careful though not to overdo it, as search engines
penalize "keyword stuffing". Also use full sentences and make
them sound natural. The clever search engine algorithms have
recently just become even more advanced, and can now track
unnaturally sounding sentences !
5. Optimized Title, Description & Keyword Tags
Each page of your website should be individually optimized in
terms of the message you want it to carry. Every page is
different and there for a specific reason. If the page info and
page tags do not match in terms of keywords, the page will not
show up in search engine results. Search engines want to give
searchers relevant results, and by not applying this principle,
your site will not rank well.
6. A Site Map with links to all pages
Assist the search engines by making it easy for them to index
your site. If all pages can be reached from a central point like
a sitemap, you will firstly make sure that the search engine
spider finds all your site pages, and secondly help visitors to
find relevant info and pages quickly. Sites with good structures
and fresh content gets spidered more often.
7. All pages back-linked to the Site Map and Home Page
Visitors to your website will not necessary land on the index
page or sitemap. It is therefore imperative to give them a way
to get to your index, site map and other important pages. A well
structured informative website also receives more return
visitors.
8. Standard background & fonts on all pages
By keeping pages uniform, you ensure your visitors know they are
still on your site. Having various banners, backgrounds and
fonts will only confuse visitors. Try to stick to one font, or
two at the most. The human eye needs to adjust every time it
reads text written in a new font. Do not irritate your visitors
by using many different fonts - they will leave in a flash !
If you have an existing website, but nothing much have been
happening for you, try to apply these 8 principles and see what
good transpires...
About the author:
Brian is a freelance writer, website marketing and SEO expert &
webmaster of 3 websites, including Rank Advance :
http://www.rankadvance.com
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