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The_Key_to_Effective_Web_Site_Design
| The Key to Effective Web Site Design
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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.
About the author:
Breal provides cost effective web site design and hosting with a
full 30 day money back guarantee. Web hosting even comes with
six months free hosting on yearly accounts. To find out more
visit http://www.brealweb.com For a complete list of current
articles, send any e-mail to mailto:articlelist@brealweb.com
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