Basic Web Design Principles
Home Page
The home page should clearly indicate what the site
is about. Provide top level navigation on the first
page, your logo, and tell the visitor what he can
find on your web site. Your home page should be informative,
and should call your visitor to action. The home page
is the place where the visitor decides what he will
do, click on some of your links, or leave the site.
If you have a discount, or if you offer some free
service in attempt to make a contact with potential
customers, make sure to provide link to that service
on your home page.
If you decide to implement a flash intro on your
first page, make sure to give the user the possibility
to skip the flash intro. The link “skip intro”
should be outside of the flash, because you will force
the visitor to wait until the Flash movie has loaded.
Navigation structure
Place the navigation on the place where the people
are used too looking for it. Don’t experiment
with the navigation! I can’t stress this enough.
Keep the navigation system the same on ALL pages.
Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation
system. Consistency is the most important thing here.
You should focus your effort on building consistent
rhythm across all pages of your site.
Font size
Your font size should be enough big so your text
can be read without effort. There are many people
who will not bother to read very small letters. Don’t
loose your visitors because of font size. Optimal
size seems to be 12-13 points. Break big chunks of
texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.
Line Length
The length of a line of type should be comfortable
to read. The optimal line length for printed materials
seems to be about 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters.
Somewhat shorter lines of about 40 to 50 characters
may be more appropriate for larger displays. If the
line is too long the reader must search for the beginning
of it; if it is too short it will break up words or
phrases awkwardly.
Creating emphasis
Creating emphasis is an important and integral part
of designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and
good judgment it can help direct and inform the reader.
When these qualities are lacking, or someone feels
that every word is important and must be emphasized
in some way then your web page starts to look like
a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!
Graphics
It’s well known that one picture worth more
than a million words. This rule applies on the Internet
too. Do your best to show clear, attractive photos
of your product. If you offer a service, find a photo
which will best describe them. However, be careful
about file size. Don’t compress your photo to
the level that it is not clear, but also don’t
leave the photo on full quality. That will make file
size too big, and will increase download time.
Gif vs. JPEG
Less experienced web designers many times use the
wrong format to store their picture. Here are few
guidelines which will help mistakes to be avoided.
If your photo has a small number of colors (less then
64) GIF will be better choice. Make sure however to
reduce the palette size too. That is, if your image
has 10-15 colors only, reduce your palette on 16 or
32 colors. Also, if your image contains text, GIF
format should be your choice. JPEG use loosy compression
method and will cause text and edges to become blurry.
If you are saving a photograph – save it as
JPEG. JPEG images can contain over 32 million different
colours. That is much more than the human eye can
see. If you want to incorporate large text into a
photographic image, JPEG may be a good format to use.
While the edges may still get blurred, danger of it
becoming unreadable is slim. If you think your image
is more important than the text, go ahead and use
the JPEG format.
Speed
Do your best to reduce the download time. We live
in a busy world and people are not will to wait long
time. Try to reduce size of your graphics as much
as possible without to destroying the image. The image
must look good, but size (in KB) should be as small
as possible.
Test before publishing
Do your homework, and do it well. Your visitors will
not bother to send you an E-Mail that some of your
links does not work or that some of your images do
not appear. Even if some do so, it is quite embarrassing.
Perform spell and grammar checking. Remember that
in many cases the visitor will build his opinion about
you or your company on based on your web site. When
published, your site should not contain any “under
construction” or “coming soon” messages.
About The Author:
Zoran Makrevski Search
Engine Positioning Firm SEO.Goto.gr
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