Top 5 Basic Rules of Web Design

5 Basic Web Design Principles The most important rule in web design is that your website should be easy to read. What does this mean? You should choose your text and background colors very carefully. You do not want to use a background that hides your text or use colors that are difficult to read. Light text in the background with light color is easier to read than light text in black background. And you do not want to set your text size too small (difficult to read) or too large (it will seem to shout at your guests). All uppercase letters give the impression of shouting at your guests. Keep your main text alignment left, uncluttered. Middle text is best used in articles. You want your guests to be comfortable with what they are learning, and many texts are left to their own devices. Your website should be easy to navigate, All your links should be clear to your visitors. Vivid images, such as buttons or tabs, should be clearly labeled and readable. Your web designer should choose colors, background, style, and special effects for your web photos carefully. It is very important that your navigation buttons and tabs are easy to read and understand, rather than have "glossy" effects. Link colors in your text should be known to your visitor (blue text usually indicates a non-visited link and purple or maroon text usually indicates a visited link), if possible. If you choose not to use default colors, your text links should be emphasized in some other way (bold, large font size, suspended between thin straight lines, or a combination of these). Text links should be different - they should not look like any other text on your web pages. You do not want people to click on your articles because they think the articles are links. Your visitors should be able to find what they are looking for on your site with three clicks. If not, they are more likely to click on your site as soon as they click. Your website should be easy to find, How do your visitors find you online? The myth, "If I build a website, they will come," is still a common belief among companies and organizations online. People will not come to your website unless you promote your site both online and offline. Websites are developed online through search engines, indexes, prize sites, advertising, electronic magazines (e-zines) and links from other websites. If you are not familiar with any of these online policies, it is best to have your site recommended by an online marketing expert. Websites are developed offline using standard advertising methods: print ads, radio, television, brochures, word of mouth, etc. Once you have built a website, all your company's printed items including business cards, letters, envelopes, invoices, etc. your URL should be printed on it. Not only should it be easy to find your website, but your contact details should be easy to find. People are interested in knowing that there is someone on the other side of the website who can help them in the event of: 1. They need answers to questions that are not readily available on your website; 2. Something else on your site is not working, and end users need to be able to tell you about it, and 3. Directory editors need you to modify parts of your site to make sure your site is ranked the most appropriate. By providing all relevant contact information (area address, phone numbers, fax numbers, and email address), you create a sense of security for your end users. They can communicate with you in a way that makes them feel very comfortable. The layout and layout of your web page should be consistent throughout the site As with any document formatted in word processor or as in any brochure, newsletter, or newspaper formatted on a desktop publishing program, all explicit images and features, text types, titles, and footnotes should remain consistent throughout your site. Compatibility and compliance in any document, weather report or set of web pages, produce a professional image. For example, if you use drop shadow as a special effect on your bullet points, you should use drop shadows on all of your dots. Link colors should match all your web pages. The type and background colors, too, should always be the same for your entire site. Web pages with color coding, in particular, require this consistency. Genre formatting, alignment of key text and titles, background effects, and special effects on images should always be the case. Only colors should change. Your website should be quick to download Studies have shown that visitors will quickly lose interest in your site if most of the page is not downloaded within 15 seconds. (Artists' pages should have a warning at the top of their pages.) Even websites that sell to high-end users need to consider download times. Sometimes, accessing websites like Microsoft or Sun Microsystems is so difficult and time-consuming that visitors often try to access the site during working hours from their homes. If your business does not have good brand name recognition, it is best to keep your download time as short as possible. Proper use of this rule adds animation to your site. Sure, animation looks “cool” and catches your eye at first, but animation tends to be larger. Check the download time for your pages first. If the download time for your page is short and the addition of animation does not unnecessarily increase the download time for your page, then ONLY should animation be considered. Lastly, before you consider personal preferences for the design of your web page, you should consider all of the above rules FIRST and align your preferences accordingly. The attitude "I do not like what it looks like" should always be second to f