Clarity: Top Web Design firms critically emphasize the importance of clarity to make websites user-friendly. Websites should make things understandable and easy to the users with an easy to use navigation. Use clear layouts and organized structures with apparent and familiar looking links. Visitors will find it pretty annoying if they can not find what they want and it is less likely that they would return to your site again.

Brevity: Websites, especially e-commerce sites, or sites that offer a tool or service typically require visitors to fill out a form. Web design experts recommend that you keep these forms short and to the point; having to fill out information that is excessive in length will cause visitors to leave your site and not follow through with the order process. What consumers look for these days is their comfort and processes in speed of light, so processes that require time is a thing of the past.

Privacy: It is suggested by designing companies that not asking for personal details from visitors for trying out certain services can maximize better business hand. Having to do so deter users from trying introductory software downloads that they might later be willing to pay for. Let users explore and discover what your services have to offer before you ask for personal information. Once these users decide that they like the service you are offering, they are much more willing to provide personal data such as an email address in return.

Readability: While high quality, useful content is an extremely important element of website usability, do not make the mistake of using too much text in your web design page lay out. Web design firms use italics and bold words in contents so that users can spot easily what they are looking for. Break content up and help explain it with images and captions, bullet points, and headings. Content is a must, but make sure you do not feed any useless or good for nothing contents to agitate a user.

Simplicity: Always remember the “keep it simple” mantra for an amazing website. Use a neat an simple structure for the web design. Make sure there is a limit to the amount of pop ups, audios and videos featured in a site. These can overwhelm users, and without adequate technology, overload their computer and deter them from using your site. Use hierarchical structures to give a sense of visual hierarchy to delineate the content type and importance. Maintaining a proper structure, colors and fonts all throughout your site will ad credibility into your sire.

1)      Optimize images to increase loading speed.( Less image more content)

2)      Design a content based layout.( More content more search engine ranking and traffic)

3)      Create static navigation links both header and footer.( Top menu and footer menu)

4)      Add content to web pages inside p tag avoid br tag.(The tag is an empty tag )

5)      Minimize table especially nested tables.( Try to use div )

6)      Add div avoid using old tables.

7)      Avoid Java script.( Less java the page will load faster)

8)      Use H Tags like h1…h6 for placing Keywords example like service name and products.(For Important Words)

9)      Create file name related to web page example web-design-India.htm or html or php and try to avoid keeping page name as Page name1.html, page name2.php, http://www.yoursitename.com/templates.Php? etc.

10)  Add alt tags related to images and your keywords.

11)  Avoid using frames.( Most of the search engines don’t like frames and it wont crawl your site)

12)  Validate web page for W3c to avoid html code error.

13)  Add a good site map structure for your website.

14)  Make a blog associated with your main website.

STOP!!!!

Take a deep breath and read some practical tips for professional looking websites.

1. Select a colour scheme and stick to it.

If your company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that’s a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them – don’t change colours on every page.

The most common colour schemes include:

- Red, yellow and white
- Blue and white
- Red, grey and white
- Blue, orange and white
- Yellow, grey and white.

If you’re not sure what colour scheme to choose, surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can then model your colour scheme on what already exists.

2. Use templates.

Can’t find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set designs. These come as part of your web design software (such as FrontPage) or you can check out some websites that specialise in designing templates.

Visit:

www.web4business.com.au emplates1.htm
www.newtemps.com
www.website-templates-resale-rights.com
www.123webtemplatesandmore.com

3. Provide an easy to use navigation system.

This is one of the most important issues to consider when designing a website. You need to ensure your visitors can find what they are looking for easily. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it’s best to stick with it.

It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

4. Don’t go overboard on special effects

Whilst it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up your website, spinning graphics and logos often distract your visitor from the content, not to mention they can take too long to download. Your visitors may click away even before your spinning logo finishes loading.
5. Backgrounds

Ensure your visitors can read the text on the background, ie. no black writing on dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure your links are light.

6. External Links

It is a good idea to open links to other websites in a new window. That way your visitors can easily return to your site when they are finished browsing the external link

7. Site Map & Search Feature

If you website is more than 15 pages, it is useful to have a site map or a “Search” feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.

8. Content is King

While it is important that your website looks clean and professional, it is far more important that you concentrate your efforts on the content and promotion.

If you want a professional website, things to stay away from include:

1. Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, animated mail boxes
2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes
3. Autoplay music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose.
4. Hit counters of the free variety, which say “you are 27th visitor”
5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly
6. Busy backgrounds.

Don’t sweat the small stuff and get yourself focussed on what to include on the website and the best way to promote it. We will cover these topics in future articles.

This article is written by Ivana Katz whi is the owner of Websites 4 Small Business – www.web4business.com.au, a company specialising in the design and promotion of small and home-based business websites.