Web Design: 30 Ways to a Way Better Website

Did you know over 45,000 new websites are created each hour? That’s a lot of surfing.

These days, virtually anyone with a mouse, a monitor, and a connection can create a website.

The main problem with new websites, however, is that a basic principal is often overlooked – the design.

Whether it's poor navigation, unreadable text, or dreadful graphics, a lot of developers forget that users need an enjoyable web experience if they want people to visit, and revisit, their site. Before web design becomes something of a long lost art, let’s review 30 ways to create your site so it’s more user-friendly, better constructed, and "easier on the eyes".

Planning Your Website.

Successful design is not only about appealing images – it’s about taking the right approach, and having the right attitude.

1. Purpose. Clearly define the purpose of your site. Do you want to educate people? Solicit business? Or simply make people laugh? The more you know about the purpose of your site, the easier it will be to design it.

2. Flexibility. Anticipate the possibility of your website growing or expanding in the future. Having the flexibility to accommodate things like add-ons, modifications, and/or improvements to your site will help you avoid problems down the road.

3. Industry. Put your website into context by learning as much about your industry as possible. Visit websites that are relevant to yours and/or have the same audience or business goals. Examine the styles they use to communicate with visitors and evaluate the website’s statistics using using alexa.com and compete.com to get a better idea what you’re up against.

4. Audience. Try to envision your audience. How old are they? What kinds of things do they enjoy? What would they be looking for in your website? A better understanding of your target audience will allow you to create a website that is tailored to their wants, needs, and interests.

5. Site map. Try to fit your website content into a logical and intuitive structure. A simple map of your website will help visitors find information quicker and easier.

6. Web Pages. Define the goals for each page of your website. Whether it’s to inform, educate, or drive a sale, each individual web page should have its own purpose and its own goal. Write down the aim, title, and description for each page and ensure it aligns with the overall purpose of the website.

7. Flow. Make a list of web pages that your visitors may go to when searching for similar types of information, and create links to your website wherever possible. This will help to make your website content more accessible to your audience.

8. Result. Determine the short-term and long-term goals for your site. This will help you to specify and track the efficiency of your website. In the meantime, monitor your website and ensure your web pages are fulfilling their preset tasks.

9. Documentation. Draw up a detailed plan for your website. It will help you to focus better on your website design.

Creating the prototype.

A prototype will help you avoid potential hidden reefs while developing the design of your site and allow you to correct the mistakes in advance. This can help you save time, money, and a lot of stress.

10. Experience. Get acquainted with the general practice of using webpage elements. For example, a logo is often used as a link to a homepage and is usually located in the top left corner. Integrate commonly used webpage practices like this so users can navigate your site with comfort and ease.

11. Sketches. Take a pencil and draw up what one of your web pages is going to look like. It’s important to clearly define a place for the menu, webpage contents, and images.

12. HTML version.Create HTML versions of your principal web pages based on the sketches you’ve created. Once you have the basic pages ready, it’ll be much easier for you to envision and develop the entire website.

13. Navigation. Identify the most important sections of your website and highlight them in the main menu. If necessary, you can create a submenu for every section of your website. Keep the navigation as easy as possible. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your visitor can navigate to any two pages on your site in three clicks or less.

14. Additions. Add the required elements to your HTML pages in order to:

* help your visitors achieve their goals; * achieve your own website goals without distracting your visitors.

15. Unity. Group all the elements of your site according to their functions and meaning. This will help create consistency and unity between your web pages.

16. Analysis. Testing the web pages and putting yourself in the shoes of a visitor will help you anticipate problems with your site and allow you to correct them in advance.

Designing Your Website.

Remember that a successful design makes content more understandable and user-friendly. Design is the language of your website - it should be attractive, simple and understandable for everyone.

17. Consistency. Use the same formatting for all pages. A consistent look will make your website more user-friendly while also making site administration easier.

18. CSS. Create a cascading style sheet for your site. That way, you’ll be able to test various font styles and sizes and choose the one that suits your site the best.

19. Readability. Choose a combination of background and font colors that complement each other so as to make the text easy to read and scroll through.

20. Spacing. Proper spacing on your web pages – deciding where to place content and where not to place content –is very important for the design and readability of your site. Empty spaces can help visually split the text into fragments and make readability easier.

21. Graphics. Use graphical images only if necessary. Keep an appropriate balance between the file size (kb) and quality of the images to reduce the load time of your pages.

22. Significance. Make sure the most important content is displayed first on each web page. Highlighting the most important information will catch the user’s attention and help communicate the message faster.

23. Insignificance. Keep the content of secondary significance reduced to minimum. This will allow you to keep your website content clear and focus your visitor’s attention on the most important things.

24. Scenarios. Anticipate the behavior of people who will visit your site. You can adapt by letting some elements of your web pages change if you anticipate certain actions from a visitor. That will bring some life to your website 25. Resolution. Ensure your web pages are compliant with standard screen resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc.). Avoid using the horizontal scroll bar.

26. Fonts. Ensure that your design is equally suitable for larger and smaller fonts to accommodate those with vision impairment.

27. Validation. Check an HTML code of pages and CSS for the approved standards compliance at validator.w3.org. It will help you correct possible mistakes appearing while using various browsers.

28. Opinions. Ask people to test your site and give their feedback. Remember, a successful website is one which communicates effectively with its visitors..

29. Optimization. Ask yourself if your site’s efficiency optimizes the content effectively. Optimizing your site will make things a lot better in the long-run.

30. SEO. No matter how well your site is designed, you still need to make sure people can find it. Ensure your site is easy crawable by search engines.

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Web Design: 30 Ways to a Way Better Website - To learn more about this author, visit Max Entin's Website.

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