There are a lot of details to consider when designing and developing a web site. In reality, it can seem like an endless list — but if you look carefully you’ll see that there are certain elements that are more important than others, elements that are used consistently among the most successful sites. Once you’ve completed the conceptualization of your website, the rest of the elements fall into broad categories ranging from User Interface design to content creation to actual development.Some tips for building a good website are-
Well thought out User Interface
The user interface is the foundation of any good functional web site. When designing a site, you’ll need to take into consideration your average user. Who is going to be visiting your web site — who is your ideal customer? Are they tech-savy? Or, are they not? People visit your website to find information or the product they are looking for. You will want to be sure that your navigation is easy to spot and consistent throughout the entire web site. Make it obvious where the user should click both in terms of your primary navigation, as well as for links within your content areas. It’s helpful to create an image of your ideal visitor and have them in mind when planning out the design for your site. Be sure you offer everything on your site that they would want to find before buying from you or, becoming a subscriber.
Good Content
When writing the copy for your web site, it’s important to provide helpful, knowledgeable information about your company, products, services, etc. If you’re running a blog, informative articles related to your area of expertise are incredibly helpful as well. You might have a pretty web site which will catch someone’s eye, but if the content is no good, there are strong chances that they wont stick around.
Use of Flash
Flash has its uses, but I don’t think there’s any reason for using it to power your website. When done badly, it can take up bandwidth, can confuse users with bizarre navigation and control mechanisms, and there are plenty of issues relating to accessibility. So, make sure that you use flash, but, keep it to minimum. Don’t overuse it!
Texture
Texture is the physical quality of a surface. Applying some sort of texture to nearly every element of your work is also becoming extremely trendy in web design right now, so it’s important to think about when, where and how to use it. It all seems very obvious, but it’s also extremely easy to fall in the trap of using random textures just to make things look more tangible. Just like all other elements, take strong consideration in whether or not the textures you’ve chosen fully support your desired concepts.
Search Engine Support
If you have a large web site or blog, having a search field is incredibly helpful. There’s nothing more frustrating than surfing through hundreds of pages to find specific content. You can use a Google Search Engine on your site, or if you have WordPress, this will be fairly easy to accomplish. It’s not quite as easy to set this up with a static html site, but there are still services out there that will let you incorporate a functional search box onto your site.
Use a combo- XHTML and CSS
The days of using html tables for layout and design are long gone. The best developed sites use a combination of XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which create a separation of design vs content. With this separation of content from design, the search engines no longer have to wade through all of the excess code to find out if your content is relevant, either. And with separate files, the content can load quicker, too.
Image optimization for Web
It’s important that your website images are saved in an compressed format. Not too much that your images become pixelated, but as much as possible while retaining quality. Programs like Adobe Photoshop have a “Save for Web” feature that will automatically convert your image to 72dpi, as well as give you a variety of compression settings when saving your images. For web this will likely be either png, jpg or gif depending on the particular usage.
For a good website a strong concept is mandatory, otherwise your design will fail. You will be mixing and matching styles with no core values in mind. It could look pretty in the end, but that’s simply not enough in today’s market. Take some time and really think about where you want to start. Building on bad ground will yield bad construction. So, plan your moves carefully to see better results.
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