Thursday, March 5, 2009

Great website design ideas

By Ross Taylor

A good aesthetic appeal can never make up for a lack in performance where your website design is concerned. Most amateurs and professional webmasters belief that the more visual and audio aids they use on their website, which means slower loading time, the better it is for the visitor, when it isnt so.

Here are five important website design rules of thumb to observe which should ensure your website performs well. 1) Splash pages are not a good idea

1) Splash pages are not a bright idea; Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. These pages use elaborate designs created with the purpose to entertain the visitor with fancy animations, brilliant photos and include welcoming words such as hello, welcome or click here to enter our website. They are merely fancy additions without any real functions at all. Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Try using less banner advertisement if you can; When banners are displayed on a web page, they are usually right at the top but can frequently be seen located elsewhere, including the foot of the page also. Banner ad tends to be ignored by most web surfers so it is a total majority of the web surfers so they would a total waste of your website space. The best way to utilize web space would be to use good contents and weave your affiliate links into them so that the users would not feel coerced into buying.

3) Keep it simple; The best navigation would one that a young child can understand. It is good to leave out any fancy flash menus or even multi-tiered drop down menus, they only serve to make navigating the site harder. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site. Your website design should include the construction a sitemap that will make it easy for them to find what they want.

4) There needs to be a clear indicator where the user is on the website; You will need to have a sitemap to facilitate the user to be in control. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Make sure that every page has its own title and that some form of breadcrumb trail is used to track the visitors step throughout the entire website. Any type of confusion drives your visitors away.

5) Do not use audio; Your favorite tune may be repulsive to some visitors, so use music sparingly. A sound file should not be played continuously it can be irritating on the user. When adding audio to your website, make sure to include some form of user control that allows them to mute or lower the sound as required. If you wish for the visitors to return to your site, learn to apply all these website design rules and you can reap the benefits of long term traffic. - 15790

About the Author: