Some tips for better web designing

Category: Technology
Written by: Ammar Faheem (on November 01, 2008 - 11:23 PM)

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Frankly, it is not very easy to keep a web site running and getting the required traffic unless the website is designed with a clear thought and vision. If you have the skills, it may be easy to create a graphically pleasing website and have it up on the internet. But what will make people want to come and stay on your website when there may be thousands of other websites out there offering the same services as you are?

The objective is simple. Don’t irritate your visitor. By the looks, by content, by language and thihngs like that. You have to ensure your website is as user friendly as possible.

I’ll be writing regularly on effective web design tips at my blog from now on, hopefully =) Here are a few basics to start off with if you’re creating a website, or have created a website that is not generating traffic and your visitors just don’t stay!

• Neat, Easy, Organized Navigation: Navigation of links on your site plays a big role in determining how long your visitor stays and explores your site. Normally, as a user opens a website, he or she looks for the navigation or the main menu of the website first. If you don’t have it preoperly organized and presented, the user will not ordinarily wait and work hard to locate what he’s looking for at your website. He might just ‘Google’ it up and land up elsewhere.
• Clean Layout Design: A clean layout that uses a lot of white space enhances a site’s looks. Try to keep the focus on your content, use a template for this. Use fonts that will be available on all computers to prevent your site looking messed up.
• Optimum Load Time: Make sure your load time is low. For this you must:
  Optimize and Minimize Graphics, Flash and scripts: They hugely increase your file size.
  Optimize your HTML & script code: Make sure that your site doesn’t have any unwanted tags or unused scripts.
  Use Server Side Include (SSI) files where ever possible. SSI files once called from the web server reside in its cache so on subsequent requests they load faster.
• Design for all Screen Resolutions: I have always been a staunch supporter of this little technique. A site that is easy-to-use always encourages visitors to stay and read your content. For sites with long pages of content this is very crucial as the amount of scrolling required is reduced. Suppose your site doesn’t look good for a particular resolution it is very probable that the visitor will close the browser window feeling that the web page is not for their viewing. Designing stretch layouts that fit any screen resolution ensures that you know all your visitors see a visually appealing and professional site.
• Ensure Web site scalability: Make sure your code and design is scalable. As technology advances and configuration of computers & their monitors keep increasing and varying it is impossible to test your site in all screen sizes and platforms.
• Cross Browser Compatible: Make sure you check your site for Internet Explorer 5+, Mozilla Firefox 1.0, Opera 7.0 and Netscape Navigator 6+ as they constitute 95% of the worlds browsers.
• Stay Focused on Content: One, make sure your website is rich in content and text. Two, you should be focused about your content and its presentation. If you start drifting away from your focus, your visitor will do the same. He will ‘drift’away from your website. Perhaps NEVER to return again.
• Ask Yourself: When designing a website. Keep asking yourself about what you like and dislike in a website. This helps when you’ve got a good aesthetic sence! You will never want to design what you don’t like yourself, or would you?

This is what I have for now folks! These tips include a few things from other sources too. Hope they help!

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