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The Most Useful Design Tips of the Year
The Internet is changing with the development of Web 2.0, and the changing marketplace reflects a need for increased usability, easier functionality and design that is visually appealing but that still lends to an easy to maneuver, content-rich website. The following is a list of ten top website design tips that made a difference in 2007.
1. Know the audience: The design of your website should cater specifically to your target market both in the visual sense, and in usability. It is critical that the design of your website reflect the values that your potential customers will hold.
2. Personalize: Even if your website is designed by the greatest professionals in the business, if you do not allow your customers to get to know you, or to believe in you, you will have difficulty selling your ideas.
3. No uncertain terms: Clearly identify what the purpose is for your website, and ensure that every facet of your website focuses on this goal. Are you conveying a message, selling a product or offering a service? Make this obvious from the beginning, and keep your focus until the end.
4. Keep it quick: You have between ten and thirty seconds to capture the attention of your customer, so keep graphics small in order to minimize the time it takes to load your website. Compress images when possible, so that your loading times stay low.
5. Design is important, content is more so: Good content is what sells your ideas and products. Is your copy delivering the message you intended for it to? Grammar and spelling ARE important; so proofread everything you write before it goes live.
6. Map your Site: You can make your website’s navigation much more easy and intuitive simply by creating a site map, or a directory web page. If your customer cannot navigate your website quickly or easily enough to find what they came for, they will go elsewhere for solutions.
7. Strive for consistency: Your website should be consistent in the design, the look and the feeling. Colors, themes and ideas should stay constant throughout every page on the website to make the best impression on your visitors.
8. Keep track of links: You should make sure that your site is fully functional at all times, which means checking out your website links on a fairly regular basis. If you have dead links on your site, there is no telling how much of a negative impact will transfer to your search engine page ranking, or the opinion your visitors have of your website.
9. Make a simple start: When you begin your site, take everything one page at a time, and optimize each page for the best results before moving on to the next. This means that you should make sure that every page is perfect before leaving it for the next one.
10. Optimize: The top search engines are responsible for helping more than 85-percent of all web users to find exactly what they are looking for. If you want to be one of the websites that is considered when users look for similar products or information, you must make sure that your pages are designed to maximize your search engine placement.
I hope you enjoyed our Top Ten Design Tips list - If have any comments or would like to add to the list - we strongly encourage you to do so…
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December 29th, 2007 at 4:52 am
Concerning point 6, I came across a cool solution at http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/quintura-search-widget
December 29th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Urgen,
Thanks for the recommendation for widgetbox - I have never used them.
We use a WordPress plugin Google(XML)Sitemaps Generator for WordPress to automatically generate our sitemap.
-Jeff
January 6th, 2008 at 12:20 am
With my Adobe Illustrator website over at aiburn.com I use so many screenshots for each post. It could make loading times difficutlt for some users. I need to work on optimizing my images. I tend to export .png’s to keep things flexible as I’m creating the site. Because I might edit the screenshots and .png’s don’t degrade. I have to remember to go back in and optimize them all as .jpgs. So 4. Keep it quick is a big one for me to work on. Thanks.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Sean,
Thanks for the comment - neat looking site you created at AiBurn.com. Anyone interested in learning more about Illustrator should check out Sean’s site. According to the site they will help their readers “learn to create red hot graphics with tips, tricks, and techniques that will have you firing out graphics in no time”.
PS - nice design as well…
January 21st, 2008 at 6:04 am
<p>Thanks for your “Top ten tips for web designing”. they were really cool. Infact, these tips could prove very helpful for many upcoming web designers.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Great List!!! Your top ten looks very informative. I guess I would focus on #10… Design must also be Optimization Friendly I think. So that your site would be easy to optimize for better rankings on SE.
February 1st, 2008 at 10:59 am
Lara,
I appreciate your post and thoughts on optimization. After visiting your site - I can see why #10 would be your focus.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Thanks for the quality list, I appreciate the information you have provided!
February 19th, 2008 at 6:00 am
All tips are practical and nice. Thanks for guidlines.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Ultimately, the priority should be as usable a solution as possible to users as a website so that they can find the information they’re looking for. A website needs to focus on gestalt laws and perception psychology to enable effective navigation through a site.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Thanks for giving most important information abt practical
March 14th, 2008 at 4:21 am
It’s Good & Interesting. T like it… Keep it up..
Laxman Bhattarai
http://www.laxmanb.com.np
March 16th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Great design tips! I’m a freelance web-designer and I’m a firm believer that you have to get it wrong to get it right. Sometime my clients become overly obsessed with making their websites perfect the first time around.
March 20th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Excellent post. I agree with having a goal in mind and knowing your target audiecne this is the key to a successful website.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Great list…very useful and practical tips.
Keep up the great work!
Ovi Dogar
The CoversExpert,
www.AbsoluteCovers.com
March 27th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Excellent post, always focus your attention on your target audience. Successful marketing is the key.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Interesting list, but I’d give bigger priority to usability.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:55 am
That’s a great article and very useful tips:) I think that’s almost everything you should know to have a successful website!
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
Great list! Thanks for the summary.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Although offsite SEO factors are important one should not underestimate the importance of adding new and freah content to a website.
Our own web design company website http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk initially saw good results after our on site and off site SEO campaigns. After a while however we were running out of new SEO techniques to try. In the second phase of our SEO Campaign we are concentrating on updating our website with regular, new , quality content. We have also set up a web design resources blog at http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog mainly for this purpose. This has added a completely new stream of visitors to our website.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
That’s a great article and very useful tips:) I think that’s almost everything you should know to have a successful website!
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Some good tips. I always like to read another’s perspective on SEO and site building.