Web design tips

This page is packed with useful web design tips to help you to get your site off on a sure footing from Day 1.

However you make your site, whether you use HTML or a site builder, it's always important to pay attention to the basics.

Here are 6 simple tips to get you underway, and they'll help you when planning your site's look and feel.

Keep it simple

I can't emphasise this enough and it's one of the most important web design tips that I can give you.

When people start working on the web, they tend to cram their website with every bell, whistle and gizmo that they can.

All over the page there are animations, the cursor is doing weird and wonderful things and you can't see the text for all the adverts.

Keep it simple ... lose the clutter, don't overdo it, ask yourself on every page 'What's my most wanted response from my visitor on this page?'

It might be to read your text, then buy your product, or to sign up to your newsletter or browse your online photo gallery.

Whatever the aim of each page, make sure that you focus on that and don't distract your site users with a million and one other things.

Keep it clear

This is one of the easiest web design tips, and notice how I have followed my own rules on this page.

Keeping it clear means:

- Breaking up your text so it's easy to read

- Using headings to make a page layout look more attractive

- Using bullet points for clarity and simplicity

- Breaking the page up with images or graphics that relate to the text

- Using short, concise sentences which stick to a single idea

Make it worth coming back again and again

This was actually the error I made when I first got into making my own websites.

The sites I made were fine - they were clear, they were targeted and they did the job.

However, there was no particular reason for people to come back.

Make sure that as your homebusiness site grows and develops so that there is always something new to look at.

Create a newsletter or ezine so that you can tell users what's new if they've forgotten about your website.

Give them an RSS feed to subscribe to so that they can see automatically when you have new content.

Encourage them to come back ... once you've got a customer, think of ways to keep them.

Make your site easy to read and navigate

Isn't it frustrating when you're looking for something on a website and you just can't find it?

What would you do if that happened to you?

Like me, you'd probably go back to the search engine and look for another site.

Avoid that scenario on your site by doing following these web design tips:

- Make sure that your navigation is clear, logical and consistent throughout your website

- Make sure that users can always get back to the homepage easily

- Add a sitemap so you can 'set out your store' ... let people see what you have on offer.

- Incorporate a search facility on your site so that if all else fails, a user can be sure the content that they're after really isn't there before they leave your site

Use text, not images

Images are not search engine friendly, but text is.

If you use .jpgs or .gifs instead of plain text, you are stopping the search engines from 'understanding' what your page is about.

So don't use an image to replace your key text, and that includes in your navigation too.

Use images as simple, clear illustrations of your page content, and use them appropriately and in a measured way.

Be accessible

- Make sure that all of your images use an 'alt tag' to describe the image as people who are blind or visually impaired rely on these descriptions when they use reading software to access web pages.

- When you write these alt tags 'say what you see' ... so if it's a pile of books in the picture, write 'A pile of books' in the alt tag. Don't be clever with alt tags, just describe exactly what's in the picture - if you want to be clever or obtuse, do that in the caption.

- Use easy to read text formats ... so that means a simple font (I use Verdana) on a white background.

- The guidelines within the W3C Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) are widely accepted as the starting point for assessing accessibility.

- Avoid using lots of Flash and fancy design graphics which reading software will not be able to 'interpret'.

- At a very basic level too, accessibility means allowing people with dial up connections and old PCs to be able to access your website ... which takes me back to point 1 on this page - keep it simple!

Web design tips summary

I hope you'll agree that all that sounds very simple, but believe me, your website users will thank you for it.

By way of demonstration, take a look at webpagesthatsuck.com and you'll soon find out what happens when web design goes badly wrong ... and you'll pick up lots of other useful web design tips along the way.

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