What makes good web design

2010-04-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

What makes good web design, this is a question that many people ask. And a very valid one, no one wants a badly designed website.

Functionality

An important factor to consider, right along seo (search engine optimization), is functionality. Does it work? There is no point in having a website that attracts alot of web traffic, but it does not convert those visitors into sales, or whatever your goal is with your website.

Another part of functonality is whether visitors can find what they want on the website, or how easly do they find what they are looking for on your website. This is where the 2 click rule comes into play in web design. Your visitor should not have to click more than twice to find what they are looking for.

Graphic headings vs text headings

Another important aspect of design is whether you are prepared to sacrifice search engine friendly or search engine optimized design for a visually appealing design with regard to headings. This is something that I've battled with quite a bit as a web designer - things appeal to me visually.

But sanity must prevail here, no point in having a brilliant looking design if no one visits it.

Headings that have fancy font or fancy effects are often put in as graphics. This means you are losing vital weighting for your web page, even the alt tag within the image can't make up for the loss of a text heading in a heading tag. A vital rule in web design, search engines cannot read images.

My thought on this is the to go for text headings. If you want to have a graphic heading, have both, as long as it doesn't look silly. The text heading should always take preference over the graphical heading.

This however does not mean that you should not use graphic elements in your website, you do still want an appealing website, and I greatly recommend that, being a designer I know that people will gauge you business on the look of your website. That a big YES for good looks, but with search engine friendly content (headings, etc). You should not have one without the other.

Good content

Content is vital for any website. If you want to succeed in any industry, you need to show you potenial customers that you know what you are doing, or that you provide quality products or quality services. Showing you knowledge about your field or industry, builds confidence in your ability or quality of your products or services.

Search engines also rely heavily on content. The more content you have, the better you should do in search results. A website with 2 pages on a particluar subject, won't do as well as a website with 50 pages on the same subject.

Ultimately all that search engines want to do is to provide their customers (the people searching) with the best possible results for the subject that they are searching for, else in the long run they will also lose credibility as being useful tools to find content.

Design and layout

The trend in the web design industry today is to have clean designs, where it is easy to find the navigation of the website. Clutter and trying to stuff as much as possible on the page is dying. Thank goodness. I generally divide a page into 4 areas.

1. Heading area - contains company branding, etc. Can also contain a menu if applicable.

2. Left navingation - if applicable - more navigation links.

3. Right Ancilliary area - links with related conent.

4. Content area - the good stuff people are after.

5. Footer area - copyright notice, etc.

Remember, the cleaner and less gimmicky your design and layout, the less likely it is to date quickly.

Website DON'Ts

1. Don't have Website Counters

Counters are very much a thing of the past, do you really want to show people how many visitors you are getting, or even worse, how many visitors you are not getting!!! I also fell into this trap myself in my earlier days of web design. Google offers tools to analyse your traffic to your website. I also offer a visitor tracking feature in my rize content management system.

2. Don't have Background Music

Don't have background music playing automatically. Give your website visitors the option to play the music or not. Most poeple find it irritating to have muisc or other media playing without having control over it.

3. Don't have Auto Play Movies

Like music, give your visitors an option to play the movies or not. Don't let movies start automatically. You are wasting your visitors precious data on something that they may not be interested in, and this will only annoy them and they will leave your website.

4. Flash

Flash should be used to a minimun, only have small flash files if you need to at all. At this stage search engines cannot read text in a flash file, so they cannot index any content that is embedded in a flash file.

5. Splash Intro Screens

The most clicked button or link on the internet is the skip intro button. In todays rushed society people do not have time to sit through an often meaningless introduction about your company, they are looking for information, products or services you can supply to them.

6. No Prices

Have you ever walked into a shop and found items with no prices on them, and you had to ask a shop assistant how much the item costs. Your website is the same. If you are advertising products on your website, give your customer an indication of how much it costs. They are not going to email you to ask how much it costs. They will go find it somewhere else.

This is the first part in this article. Part 2 to follow.

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