Things to consider when designing a website

A lot of websites are launched everyday. However, only a few of them can be considered effective in providing users with the information they are looking for and giving the owners the much needed traffic they need to boost sales and profits.

In this article, we will discuss little details that should be taken into consideration when planning a custom web design or creating a website.  Not paying attention to these minute details is one of the most common mistakes committed by inexperienced web designers, and some careless web masters, who end up producing ineffective websites.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.   Images can very well enhance the look of a page  but they can be as heavy as a million bytes which is not good if you want to prevent your visitors from leaving your website.  Thus,  it is advisable to use images sparingly.  Avoid using tons of images on your site as they can slow down page loading time.  Remember that not everyone is using a high speed internet connection and users usually click elsewhere than wait for a page to load.
Navigability and functionality should come first before artistic excellence.  A stunning website is worthless if users cannot navigate around it.  An effective custom web design  is one that is easy to use and does not leave users dumbfounded on where to go or what to do next.  Navigation bars and tabs are innovative ways to let users know where they are in your site and where to go next.  These tabs also encourages users to click around on your site and visit different sections thereby increasing page views per visitor!
Putting in worthless content is another major blunder.  If your content is out-of-date, inappropriate or irrelevant to your target users or poorly written, delete it and upload a new and more relevant one.  Remember to always KISS:  Keep It Short and Simple.  Users are "skimmers" and only read on text that are relevant to them.
Go for a website that looks good and functions well on all browsers, all resolutions, and all color-depths.  Users appreciate pages that look great on their own browser and their own resolution.   They make users feel "at home" than a website that proclaims "Viewed best with Browser X at a resolution of 1024x768" that will require them to change browser or screen settings.  I'd rather click away than to go through those hassles!
Don't you just hate pop up windows?  I do and i'm not the only one!  Creating a new browser window should be the authority of the user only. By default, all links must open in the same window. An exception, however, may be made for pages containing a links list. It is convenient in such cases to open links in another window, so that the user can come back to the links page easily. Even in such cases, it is advisable to give the user a prior note that links would open in a new window.
Use fancy fonts sparingly! Keep in mind that some of your users may not have the font installed on their machines and the "Cloister Black MT Light" font on your website may well be degraded into plain old Times New Roman on your user's machine. Stick to the plain vanilla fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Courier. If you are keen on using a fancy typography, make your jazzy fonts into an image and put that on the page (but keep Tip #1 in  mind).
Never underestimate the importance of those META tags. They can make all the difference between your users coming to your site and going to your competitor's – just because they couldn't find yours. Meta tags help search engines classify your page.  Duplicating or using the same keywords and description meta tags on every page of a website make them worthless. Customize the keywords and descriptions for each page or don’t use them at all.
Also avoid orphan pages or pages you failed to remember to supply links that don’t exist as far as the rest of the world is concerned. As well as alien pages or those that totally disregard the look and feel of the rest of your website and leave users feeling like they’ve been suddenly transported to a website far, far away.

Implementing a custom web design should be left on the hands of professional and experienced designers and developers.  They have the skills and are abreast with the latest techniques in building websites that work.

New Harvest Design, the perfect web service company

New Harvest Design provides cutting-edge and affordable web development and graphic design services to keep our clients ahead of the competition. Our team of highly-skilled designers is abreast with the latest trends and uses state-of-the-art technology to come up with outstanding web sites.