For some webmasters the only important thing to consider with a website design is that it looks nice. I can understand this from a basic point of view but creating a site that works for users is more than just picking nice colors. This is even truer if you depend on your site to generate sales/customers because a bad design will lose you both.
The navigation of your site is vital for getting people to the content they want. If you have some weird or wacky system for moving around the site people won't hang around, make sure it's in colors that are easy to read too. Never sacrifice usability for design.
Flash has been around for a long time and in small doses it can really brighten a site up, i.e. a rotating banner. However there are too many problems with sites that are all flash. They don't work on iphones, google can't index them, you can't use the back/forward buttons in your browser. For these reasons I suggest you avoid full flash at all costs.
Many webmasters like to throw in the whole kitchen sink when it comes to displaying content, but less is definitely more. The worst offenders are ecommerce sites which give you 10 pages of technical data on every product. Unless people can find the info they want fast they are going to leave.
It wasn't too long ago that there was only one browser you had to test your site in but those days are long gone. It's essential you check your site in not just the different browsers but also the different versions of them. For example ie7 can often display things very differently than ie8, the only way is to test.
Consistency is essential if you want to appear professional and there's nothing more unprofessional than standard fonts and colors which change throughout the site. If your using Arial then stick to it otherwise I'm going to get the impression you don't know what you're doing, and I'm pretty unlikely to hand over my credit card details. I hope these tips help next time you're designing a site.
The navigation of your site is vital for getting people to the content they want. If you have some weird or wacky system for moving around the site people won't hang around, make sure it's in colors that are easy to read too. Never sacrifice usability for design.
Flash has been around for a long time and in small doses it can really brighten a site up, i.e. a rotating banner. However there are too many problems with sites that are all flash. They don't work on iphones, google can't index them, you can't use the back/forward buttons in your browser. For these reasons I suggest you avoid full flash at all costs.
Many webmasters like to throw in the whole kitchen sink when it comes to displaying content, but less is definitely more. The worst offenders are ecommerce sites which give you 10 pages of technical data on every product. Unless people can find the info they want fast they are going to leave.
It wasn't too long ago that there was only one browser you had to test your site in but those days are long gone. It's essential you check your site in not just the different browsers but also the different versions of them. For example ie7 can often display things very differently than ie8, the only way is to test.
Consistency is essential if you want to appear professional and there's nothing more unprofessional than standard fonts and colors which change throughout the site. If your using Arial then stick to it otherwise I'm going to get the impression you don't know what you're doing, and I'm pretty unlikely to hand over my credit card details. I hope these tips help next time you're designing a site.
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