Author Login | Popular Articles | RSS Feeds | Sitemap

Home | Computers-and-technology


Web Design Basics

By: Gary Mattoc

What constitutes a good website design? Does it showcase your design prowess? Does it prove what a brilliant graphic designer you are? Does your web design fetch you designing awards? Or does your website design exist to establish a platform for you and your visitors to interact with each other unhindered by usability glitches? I think the last point is the most important factor that establishes the basic difference between a successful and an unsuccessful website.

The criteria for good web design depends upon the person and the purpose of each site. That said there are some established conventions that you are advised to follow to ensure that your completed site has as wide a reach as possible. When you are designing your website, especially these days, you have to be constantly conscious of the fact that there are numerous browsers and numerous devices that people may use to access your website. No longer do people browse the Internet just through their PCs and laptops; there are many handheld devices that can directly connect to the Internet and enable people to browse your website; people can even browse your website using their mobile phones. The days when 99$ of the population used Internet Explorer as their primary browser are far behind us.

What are you showcasing or what is the main focus of your site as this will drive the overall design of your site: will you include videos, images just text or maybe a mixture of all three? You have to design your website accordingly. If the content of your site will mainly be text, it is often a good idea to minimise the graphical elements and animations so that users are not overly distracted by images video etc and are able to concentrate on the text provided. Similarly a website showcasing your Flash animation expertise will expect lots of Flash work so you needn't worry about making your website textually accessible.

So when you are designing your website you have to take all these parameters into consideration. But does it mean that you're always accommodating browsers and devises and do not focus on your own business, whatever that is? No, I'm not suggesting that. Just take care of the following website design guidelines and you will make sure that 95% people (well, there will always be those odd 5% who can never browse the web easily no matter what they try) surfing the Internet can access your website:

1) Create a lighter design. Where possible do not overuse either Javascripts of Flash that effect the major functionality of your site, including menus. For instance if there is some crucial information on your website and people need to access that information before doing business with you then don't make that information accessible only through a JavaScript on an image file or a Flash animation. It goes without saying that possible you important text should be available as text and not images, if this is not possible then you need to consider image replacement techniques.

2) Don't use colors that cause strain to the eyes. If you want people to come to your website again and again and consume your content or do business with you then you must make their stay over your website as pleasant as possible. No matter how awesome your design looks if the color combinations are strain-full, after a while they will tire of your website and stop coming. Always take care that your background behind the text is far lighter than the text, and vice versa.

3) Plan a carefully considered (from the users perspective) navigation system. If you have multiple pages on your website then there should be a prominently defined navigation system that is easily accessible to everybody. As mentioned above don't let your navigation depend on images, JavaScripts, or Flash animation. If possible create just a text-based navigation bar. With CSS designing you can create great looking navigation bars.

4) Design your website using CSS because then you can make your content and your navigation bar appear in a linear fashion. Since all the layout-related placements take place through CSS definitions no matter how your text appears texturally, graphically it will appear as a pleasant layout. The CSS designing techniques also enable you to dabble with intricate layouts without making your website inaccessible. CSS designing will always help you arrange your main content before the navigation link despite making it visually appear beneath the navigation bar or to the right of it.

Follow these basic web design principles and you will have a good website design to boast of. Never forget that the main purpose of your site design should be to create a good user experience for your visitors, the design is not there to indulge your design whims and fancies, so do not get caught up in the temptation to over complicate things unnecessarily.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
The author Gary Mattoc is the CEO of a Cambridgeshire based Peteborough Web Design Company, Doublespark. We also offer Cambridge Web Design Services to SME clients.

| Print | Ezine Ready | |

Recent Computers-and-Technology Articles

  • Satellite downlink By: vishal gupta - What are Satellites? Satellites are small object orbiting around bigger objects. The moon is actually a satellite orbiting around earth. The moon is a natural satellite but today when we talk about satellites we mean human made machines which orbit around earth for a variety of purposes. Satellite services - What are satellites used for? There is a huge variety of satellite services. Satellites can be used for military purposes, weather forecast, navigation (GPS), communication (data transmission), internet and much more. One of the most frequent uses of satellites is to transmit TV channels around the world.
  • In the New iPhone By: Sajjad Haider - In San Francisco, Apple's chief executive officer Steve Jobs took the wraps off the new edition of the iPhone on Monday, June 9, 2008. Aesthetically, the difference between the two generations is barely perceptible. The news makers, however, were the new additions to the much-anticipated gadget. The new iPhone sports a 3rd-generation (3G) wireless support, affording faster Internet connections than the previous, slower, EDGE support. Another is the addition of business-friendly capabilities, such as synchronized e-mail and calendar through Microsoft's Mail Exchange, and access to corporate data.
  • Intel Core i7- Is here By: aaroah sunil - There was a lot of hype about the launch of the Intel Core i7. It was said to be bigger and better, the launch also meant that Nehalem, was making its much awaited debut. And it did deliver a very reliable product, and in many ways a unique product, but then are some issues too. The Similarities: Let us look at how similar it is to Core 2 Quad QX9770. •They both have a Penryn Core •They consist of 45 nanometer chips •Both run at a clock speed of 3.2 GHz.
  • The Future of VoIP By: Gen Wright - VoIP technology has come a long way since it was introduced, but as technology continues to quickly evolve, it's bound to take VoIP even farther, making the technology of today seem laughable. No one knows for certain how fast things will continue to evolve, but a smart person will keep his eyes open to any benefits or opportunities the future of VoIP may bring. With that in mind, here's a look at some of the technical, personal and economic ways VoIP will change in the years and decades ahead.
  • Calling Cards for All Occasions By: Gen Wright - More and more people are purchasing calling cards not only for their own use, but to use as gifts as well. Calling cards can be great gifts for all occasions, even some you might not think of at first. While you know the people in your life best and have to make the final decision of whether a calling card is a good gift idea, here are some quick ideas for giving calling cards for various occasions. Christmas This is the most obvious holiday that sees the exchange of calling cards as gifts.
  • Using Legacy System Integration to Reduce Risk and Costs By: Alicia Hilton - Legacy system integration can be defined as reusing existing legacy systems and applications by integrating them with newly developed enterprise applications. Legacy system integration provides a non-intrusive method of reusing existing mission-critical applications that reside on legacy systems such as the mainframe or AS/400. Reclaiming these existing resources has many advantages, including reduced risk and significant cost savings. Reduced Risk through Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) For many organizations, the initial decision to employ the use of a mainframe or AS/400 centered around the system's unprecedented stability.
  • Helpful tools in Hosted SharePoint Web sites. By: Adrian Gates - Providing a starting point for the developers and the partner who look forward to build deeper solutions based on SharePoint hosting, the SharePoint Templates caters to the different business process needs in organization (irrespective of the size of the organizations). Fully compatible with the Microsoft office SharePoint designer 2007, the SharePoint Templates can actually be divided into two separate groups namely server admin templates and site admin templates. Providing out-of-the-box custom scenarios, the SharePoint Templates in SharePoint WSS 3.0 hosting can be applied in certain business tasks like sales campaign tracking or managing the helpdesk.
  • SharePoint Hosting Services Task Lists, Contact Lists and Calendars By: Adrian Gates - Microsoft SharePoint Hosting has great features such as task lists, contact lists, and calendars that help tie people and projects together. It is known to all that the projects of an organization are nothing but an ongoing process of meeting (both formal and informal) and it is all about keeping track of the minutes, tasks, agendas, follow ups, attendee lists and so on. This requires a great deal of collaboration and by far the best collaboration tool developed by Microsoft is SharePoint hosting Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
  • SharePoint Hosting Services 3.0 Web Site with Document Libraries By: Adrian Gates - SharePoint hosting services have a feature called document library that helps in sharing and update of collections of documents. When team members are working at multiple locations on the same project, it becomes very difficult to share documents for every single thing that they do. The only resort left is the email system! The most difficult aspect being that you never know which version of the document is sent over the email as a particular document can keep changing according to the needs of the project.
  • An Innovation for the Effective Collaboration Within SharePoint Hosting. By: Adrian Gates - With the advancement of the technology, the innovations have advanced as well and have been helping us in our day to day lives. Microsoft hosted SharePoint web site is one of the latest of these kinds of innovations. SharePoint workflow helps the workers to effectively collaborate on different tasks and projects. SharePoint 3.0 hosting includes a particular component known as 'workflow foundation' which is known for providing the backbone for all the applications it has.

Search Ebay

Still can't find what you are looking for? Search for it!


Submit Your link to the Open Link Directory Project

Copyright 2005-2008 MJE Sales, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Proud member of the ArticleCkr Search Network Search Network!
ArticleSnatch.com is free for both publishers and authors to use and is supported entirely from advertising revenue.
Use of our service is protected by our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.