Friday, February 20, 2009

Some Web Design Tips

By Jerry Hammond

Optimal performance is the number one priority in any website design. It is a huge mistake to assume the belief those visitors needs to be entertained with fancy flash works which usually requires long loading time, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Follow these basic rules for website design when creating your site and you can be assured of an optimally designed website you can be proud of.

1) Try to avoid using splash pages

The splash pages are the fancy pages you see when you enter a website. These are elaborately fancy pages with lavish designs and images along with words such as "welcome to our website Usually, they are pages of elaborate graphics that includes words such as "welcome or "click here to enter the site. They are merely fancy additions without any real functions at all. This fanciful addition only serves to confuse the visitor who will likely leave your website immediately if loading time takes too long.

2) Reduce the number of banners on your site

Some sites have a number of these advertising banners displayed around the page but the most prominent place is at the top. Banner ad tends to be ignored by most web surfers so it is a total majority of the web surfers so they would a total waste of your website space. Instead add useful contents and add your affiliate links skillfully into the body of the text so that it would seem like a natural part of your text and not an advertisement.

3) The best sites are always easy to navigate

The navigation should be made very simple that even a young child can manage to find their way around. Do not use any form of menus that will complicate users, drop downs and multi-tiers are not a good idea. When navigation becomes hard and frustrating, they will leave your site for good and you will probably never get them back. Have a sitemap added to the website design to help them find what they are looking for.

4) Make it clear where the user is at the moment

Give them a clear view of where they are now and how to get to where they want to be. This way, they can easily navigate the exact section they want. When each link that has been visited is marked in some way form the ones that are fresh, visitors can easily know which is fresh and which is fresh and which is not. If you confuse your visitors in any way they will leave.

5) Do not use audio

If you want your visitors to stay a long time and read the contents, do not irritate em with your audio. Whenever you decide to use sound, be sure not to let it loop continuously because this a huge cause of irritation to people browsing sites. Adding audios may seem cool but provide some form of user control such as muting ability or volume control so that your visitors can adjust accordingly. If you wish for the visitors to return to your site, learn to apply all these website design rules and you can reap the benefits of long term traffic.

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