Design>Design Tips

 

Design Tips

This is a very useful page as it summarise good design features that you should follow and also clearly points out webpage features that you should avoid. When designing your webpages you should use this page as a check list.

Feature of a Good Website

A well planned and designed website will contain the following features:

• Meet specific goals of the site owner.
• Contain focused content that appeals to the target market.
• Present content that encourages visitor contact.
• Easy to read, use, navigate, locate information and print.
• Integrated visual design theme appropriate for the target market.
• Controlled quality of technology for download speed.
• Be easily located by major Search Engines.

Website Features to Avoid

The following outlines webpage features you should avoid:

Avoid Reverse Video

Reverse video is the display of text in a light colour on a dark background colour. White text on a black background is difficult to read and can cause eyestrain. Check out the following Reverse video page! Do you agree it is difficult to read the white text on a black background.

Avoid Wallpaper

Wallpaper is a graphic display in the background with the content displayed on top of the Wallpaper. Wallpaper makes text difficult to read, particularly for people who have impaired vision. Check out the following page which contains wallpaper. It distracts you from the text making it difficult to read.

Avoid Excessive Flashing/Glitter

Avoid excessive flashing, glitter and text with too many different bright colours. These features are distracting to the eye and take attention away from the message. Check out the following page, it uses too many flashing graphics making the page more annoying rather than serving a purpose.

Avoid Lengthy Download Time

If a webpage takes too long to download, you will loose visitors to your website. A webpage should not contain more than two or three graphic images. Check out the following heavy loaded webpage, this page is distracting and takes some time to download.

Avoid Lengthy Pages

Brevity and Clarity are as important as the organization of your Website material. If your web page contains too much text or if the text is too verbose, Website visitors may be loose interest and leave.

Audio Clips

If you use audio clips, offer the visitor the opportunity to turn the audio off before it plays. Remember some people might not like to be disturbed by audio pages such as this one.

Plug-Ins

Plug-Ins are the Kiss of Death to a website. Avoid requiring a visitor to download a Plug-In to view your website. Use features which standard browsers support.

Now for the fun part. It's time to start creating your own webpages. Lets move on to the HTML Tutorial.