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Dos And Don'ts In Website Designing

While designing a website we can actually put anything we want- graphics, flash, audio, and so many others. But before we do that there some things we have to consider.

Author: Dolson Ifegwu

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While designing a website we can actually put anything we want- graphics, flash, audio, and so many others. But before we do that there some things we have to consider. Will all these things make a visitor stick to your site, make them come back again or make them walk away from your website? In view of these, before you think of designing your website, just take some time to read the dos and don'ts in website designing as stated below:

1. Do not put page counters on your website. They make you look like an amateur, mess up your design and tell people information probably you would not like them to know.

If you want to know how many people visit your website, just ask your web host for your server stats, they should be able to give you the stats of visitors to your website.

2. Keep graphics files small. You should strive to make the graphics contents of your website minimal. This is because the more graphically intense a website is, the longer it can take to download, and the longer it takes to download, the higher the probability that the visitor will leave before its done. And I don't think this scenario will be good for you.

3. Make your titles on your web page make sense. A title is one of the core attributes of a webpage. People pay more attention to page titles, so you should always ensure that they are clear. If you have a page on your website that is about how to make a dog happy, and you happen to have a dog named jacky. You should not give your page a title like "how to make jacky happy", instead you should title it "how to make a dog happy".

4. Under construction. Don't just think about it, if the page is not ready, don't put it up. If there are links that are pointing to the pages, disable them until your page is ready. If your page is truly 'under construction' and has content on it that is ready to be seen by your web surfers, just post a 'last updated' date and make sure you get the new content in place soon. What ever you do, don't put one of those cheesy 'under construction' images on the page.

5. Keep text files small. Text files rarely need to be longer than 10K. Instead, they should be broken into logical chunks and linked. If a home page doesn't load quickly, visitors can lose interest and jump elsewhere.

6. Design for easy reading. Don't trade readability for style. Make your backgrounds as light as possible (white or pastels-just make sure they use "Web-safe" non dithered colors). If you use a background image, keep the action on the side, out of the way of the text, or make it very light, low contrast, and non dithered. Use black backgrounds only on pages with large text, such as headings, then switch to dark text on a light background for pages with "normal" size text.

Because most computer screens are wider than they are tall, and good typography for the best readability demands shorter line lengths (between 30 and 70 characters per line), it makes sense to put navigation on the left (or right) side of the screen. This layout is becoming increasingly popular because it's practical and allows the site to reserve part of the screen (usually between 150 and 200 pixels) for navigation and identity. Use fixed-width tables to assure that lines don't get too long-no matter the viewer's resolution or window-size.

7. Why must people download a plug in or browser to use your website? You do not have to limit your audience just because you want to use some special features in a browser or a plug-in like flash, unless you have a website that people are dying to see. Today, with proper use of CSS and HTML you can present fantastic looking pages without having to jump through the hoops old timers like me had to when garbage browsers like Netscape 4 were being used in great numbers.

8. Flash intros. Don't waste your time on Flash intros and in my opinion Flash should be only used in special situations. Nowadays people don't care much about the flash intros, instead they use the "skip intro" button.

About Author

A webmaster and systems engineer- www.kifecwebsolutions.com

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