Whether you are designing a brand new website or you are re-designing an existing website, it is vital that you consider and keep in mind the basics but the question now is what exactly are the basics of web design?
The overall look and design of your website could make or break it when it comes to whether or not it is successful. This is why you need to ensure that when you are undertaking the design of it that it complies to some important but unwritten rules. So why is this so important? Well if you clicked onto a website with poor navigation, layout and harsh images and colours chances are you won’t stick around long on there and you certainly won’t be recommending the site to anyone else. This loses potential customers and clients to your competitors as no one is going to do business with you through your website if they don’t like the look of it. This doesn’t mean that you have to have the greatest design possible, all it means is that you get the basics right, such as the following:
- Using text that is easy to read and understand.
- Placing content within the website that answers people’s questions, such as an FAQ page or a contact us page.
- Creating a navigation and search that helps users find what they are looking for.
- Having short and simple forms when it comes to peoples details, which you would need for aspects such as registering for an account and purchasing an item at a checkout point.
- Ensuring that your website doesn’t contain any bugs, typos or corrupted data as well as outdated content.
The basics of web design is all about getting the visual aspects right and ensuring you have sufficient contact information available within the pages of your website. It is about creating a user friendly website with easy navigation that loads at a decent speed. The one aspect however that ruins a lot of web designs is being torn between designing for beauty or designing for function. However it should be noted that you can make a web site functional, appealing and usable all in the same instance you just need to get the design right. One way in which you can do this is through the text that you use.
Deciding on the style of text that you place on your website is very important; remember it is mainly going to be the text on your website that informs people of your business or organisation so you need to make sure that one it is legible and two that it is all written with the same style in mind. You can achieve both of these aspects through your choice of font. If you keep changing the font you use throughout various aspects of your website you will make your site look like it has been created by an amateur. If you really want to use various styles of writing you should stick to one font family and simply use variations of this family throughout your site. To some people this may seem unadventurous but believe me your web pages will look better as a result of it. Also try and stick to font families such as Verdana, Arial, and Helvetica, why? Because you can guarantee your site will be viewable on all browsers, where as this may not be possible if you use a more obscure font family.
Sticking with aspects that are simple to understand makes your website a lot more user friendly; one example of this can be seen within your sites font choice, another can be seen within its layout.
One of the most common mistakes to make when it comes to the layout of a website is not getting the content to fit correctly on the screen, sadly a lot of website end up with information that stretches the width of the screen instead of the length. In other cases the information on the website ends up being too small so it is all contained within one corner. Both of these are not a good idea, which is why you should aim to use the standard 3-column layout, which will contain all of your information in the middle of the electronics screen, again ensuring the usability of your website. Another important aspect however that you need to consider when it comes to the layout of your website is whitespace.
You don’t want too much or too little whitespace in your design. It is important that you leave a slight bit of whitespace around the contents of you’re website as everything is then neatly contained and your eye will easily be able to follow the design of your site without missing important aspects and without failing to find what they are looking for.
There are too many examples of badly designed sites roaming around the Internet that are either hard to navigate, confusing or badly organised. To stop your website from becoming another casualty you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and see what they feel to be easy to navigate site and to check you have all of the information they would need. This combined with a well thought out and produced web design will ensure your website is a potential success rather than a failure.