You spent countless hours designing a site with fantastic colors, attractive
images and beautiful layout but it failed to click,
did this ever happen to you? Many of the apparent reasons
could be lack of planning or inappropriate design elements.
A well thought site never fails to click. To avoid this
kind of situation it is very important for a web designer
to plan things in advance and foresee the impact of
the site. Ask a couple of questions:
Who is the target audience?
What is the purpose of the site?
What all functionalities are to be included?
If you have done your homework and have the capability
to come up with a snazzy design, you will definitely
make your first impression a lasting one.
Once things are planned, its time for the design elements
to be taken care such as:
Layout:
Simplicity is the key here. Keep the layout simple
and straightforward. This will help you to build a site
that is user friendly and accessible. Place the things
that are most important and functionally basic to the
site s purpose at the forefront. Avoid clutter because
it distracts the user.
Navigation bars:
Keep the navigation of your site really simple.
It is one of the determining factors to ensure traffic
to the site. If a first time user of your site finds
the navigation easy in the first couple of minutes of
his contact, he will definitely come back.
Place the navigation menus on top or left of the home
page because almost all the sites on www follow this
pattern. This is where most of the users are used to
look for menus. Main menu should be placed on all the
pages at the same place and try to keep the navigation
same all through the pages. Avoid scrolling horizontal.
If the site is relatively large, include a sitemap.
Color:
Site that is visually pleasing is a sure shot. So,
always use eye-pleasing colors. Don t let your personal
choices take over the required color scheme that goes
with the taste and purpose of the site in question.
You might wonder but white spaces also make great impact.
Use a lot of white space to emphasize a few things.
Too much color, words or clutter may result in sensory
overload of the user.
Readability:
No reader on net will make an effort to read the
text that is not comfortably readable, even if your
site is very useful and beautifully laid. So do not
loose out on this front and follow some standard norms
of font size and line length.
Font size and type:
Optimal font size is 12-13 pts. Use professional
font types like Verdana, Arial, and Helvetica. These
are system default fonts. Avoid using fancy fonts like
Comic Sans and the ones that are externally added. Always
use darker text on light background. Light text on darker
background is hard to read and has a blinding effect.
Graphics:
Graphics are a powerful tool to communicate. They
can say a million words in lesser space as compared
to the actual text. But use them judiciously because
too many images increase the load time. So make sure
that you optimize your images before adding them to
the website. Use a gif image if it has smaller
number of colors. Jpeg is advisable if there
is more of text to be incorporated into an image.
Download time:
More the loading time, lesser is the number of audience
to your website. So try to keep the page size as small
as possible. Always keep in mind, there are many broadband
users but greater numbers of the ones who have dial
ups. So try to minimize the size of your web pages but
still maintaining the quality of the images.
Testing:
This can be a very crucial factor since almost all
the users of your website will be having a different
combination of software and hardware available on their
system. So it s advisable to check your site on as many
as varied computers. And also if there is any malfunction
or bug on your site, its better to know it yourself
rather than people telling you (if someone is bothered
at all).
Above mentioned points can enhance your website presence
as beautifully as you ever imagined.
Hope you will find this article resourceful.
BluEnt
prides itself on being a leading global provider of
business solutions that helps add value to your business
through a wide range of Application Development and
Information Technology services. For more details, kindly
visit our website http://www.bluent.co.in/ |
