Basics of Web Design Principles
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