Design Tips

by Imaj Web Design

Before you jump into HTML and webdesign, there are a few things you need to think about. There are a lot of factors to consider in order to design a good website. When you begin laying out the design of your webpages think about some of the nicer pages you have seen on the web. Was their information organized? Was it easy to navigate through the site? Was there a lot of clutter and unnecessary graphics? Here are some things to think about as you develop your website:

• Content - This is the "meat" of your website. What do you have to offer visitors to your site? Chances are if it's just a bunch of your favorite links to other webpages, you may not get a whole lot of traffic to your site. Provide information of interest to the type of people you want to attract to your site. Remember who your audience is and think about what they might like. Keep your information current. If you want repeat visitors, you'll have to update frequently to keep a "fresh" look to your site.
  
  
• Navigation - Too often I see this one overlooked, or improperly used. It's important to make navigating through your website simple for your visitors. Make your links understandable. Don't use titles and names that are vague. Choose names that best describe what is on the page that is being linked to and/or provide a brief description of what is on each page. This can be a good introduction to your site that you can provide on your main page. Also, if your pages are long (i.e. there's a lot of scrolling down to see the whole page) then it is a good idea to have navigation links at the top and the bottom of the page. Remember, you want to make it simple to navigate through your site.
  
  
• Design
  • Color scheme/Theme - Try to keep a consistent theme or "feel" to your website. That way when someone is clicking through your pages, they can tell that they are still on your website. You can use colors or graphics to create your design theme, just keep it consistent. When using colors, be sure they are complimentary colors and readable.
    
  • Clutter - There's nothing more annoying than having to wade through a bunch of clutter to get to information. Avoid too much clutter on your pages. If you're using one of the free web space providers, you will have advertisements on your page (that's how they keep them free!) So don't add a lot more clutter to the pages. Webrings are a good example. Too often I see people that join 3 or 4 webrings, add the graphics and links, one after another, right on the top of the page! Before I can get to what their page is all about, I have to scroll past all that clutter! If you want to join a webring, put the graphic links on the bottom of your page.. and try to limit it to 1 per page. If you must join 3 or 4 webrings, try putting the webring links on different pages of your site.
    
  • Audience - I can't stress enough about concentrating on your audience. If you will be designing a page where your main audience will be persons surfing the 'net from their home, keep in mind that there are still a lot of 14400 baud modems out there. This means having a lot of graphics on your webpages can drastically reduce the time it takes to load up and view your page by visitors with these slower modems. Some people may not want to wait, and will not visit your site.
    
  • Grammar and Spelling - I'd be remiss if I didn't mention grammar and spelling. Do your best to correct typos. Most web editors have a spell checker - use it! And re-read what you typed. Does it sound right? Do you have good sentence structure? Try reading it out loud to yourself, or to someone else.

   

• Frames - One of my pet peeves. Frames can be nice, when used effectively. However, don't go overboard! And, for beginners, I suggest not using them at all. I tend to agree with Jakob Nielsen, Frames Suck Most of the Time. (Read his Alertbox article to find out why!)

I'll probably be adding more to this list as I find more and more websites that are carelessly thrown up onto the web. For the time being, if you want some additional design tips, read Patrick Beart's May 1998 ComputerBits article, "Designing Good Web Sites: Ten site-design rules to keep in mind"