One of the most important things in a websites is the overall feeling is its design. You should really pay attention to its graphics. They must not hurt your eye, colors should be harmonious, chosen to completment or highlight what the website is telling to the visitors.
The website must have a good layout. Headers must be headers, footers should be in the footer location, and content areas must have content, not copyright information. One of the most important things in a website's layout is its navigation menu. When visiting a website, you should always be able to answer these questions:
- Where am I? (Present)
- Where can I go? (Future)
- Where have I been? (Past)
You must pay attention to the website's homepage layout too. A home page must always provide you with information to another set of guidelines:
- What is this place?
- Highlights what's new.
- Must provide a very good global navigation
The home page must tell you what the website is about, and quick too. This is probably the most important goal of a home page. Otherwise, new visitors to your website won't know what they can find in your website or what is has to offer. If they don't know that, they will be confused, leave, and never return. This is all about making the best first impression, which matters the most.
The website must also provide new information for visitors that return to your website after a while, otherwise the website will now look stagnant. The layout of the website should facilitate the finding of new information, that is why easy access and precise global navigation is so important.
All this for what? Oh yes! Content . Websites with no content are junk right? You can have great coding in your website. It can have a marvelous design, but if the content is bad, you won't get customers or hit your target audience. An important part of content is your company's logo. The website must be constructed in such a manner so your logo stands out and is remembered by your visitors. Perhaps your slogan too. Pages that must provide crucial information about your company are the contact pages, and "about" pages. Make sure these two pages provide the information in a personal manner, that point out your company's qualities. You do not want a contact page that looks the same as a million other contact pages.
The content must keep the visitor interested, must not let him/her get bored. You must earn their respect so as to stay awhile on your website and read the information it provides. You should also count your important keywords. If the page you are now navigating is about horses for example, keywords like horse/horses, stable and other related words should appear a lot in the page, so that your SEO score is high. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is important. The better it is, the better you will rank in search engines results pages. It is important that your website is submitted to as many web directories with similar content to your website as possible once it is completed.
Least but not last, an important key is user science . The website must be highly accessible. First of all, forms must allow visitors to type what they need. The forms must give them room to type. Of course, name, surname, email, phone inputs must not be huge, but comments, suggestions, text areas like that must provide enough space. If a user does something wrong when submitting such a form, they must see a nice error message, explaining what they did wrong, then the possibility to return to the previous page with all the information intact. You do not want to write a 3-page suggestion again just because you have mistyped your email address. They should always know what elements in your form are mandatory and which are not.
Before your website is complete, we will make sure that the website looks, and especially works the same on as many browsers as it can. We suggest checking it using Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera browsers.
Conclusion
The website must always provide solutions that work for people, not the other way around. The user must be able to navigate easily, find the information they need. They must understand the website's structure, how it can be used most effectively without any headaches. They must feel great when navigating your website, in love, and never ever leave, but if they do, the website must make sure they come back.
Some COLOR tips:
Your page should have one dominant color, with other colors drawing the eyes to particular areas of the page.
For a harmonious feel choose colors from the same family as your dominant color. Pick 2 or 3 colors in different shades of the same color.
For a brighter image choose compli-mentary colors (colors opposite each other on the color wheel, for example blue and orange).
Other useful tips:
Know who your target audience is. For example a site aimed at bargain hunters would want to use different colors to a site aimed at a wealthy luxury seeking audience, even if the product is the same one.
Pay careful attention to magazines, particularly the advertisements in them. They were created by professionals and you can learn a lot from them.
Learn to use colors right and it may just give you the edge you need over your competition.
