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Web Design
Basics
Basic
Guidelines
The appearance of your web
site is one of the most important aspects of your success. Your product
or service will literally be judged by the appearance of your web site.
Poor web design is one of the leading causes of small business failure.
There are literally thousands of home-based Internet businesses
struggling to make a living online. Most, make very little or no money
and end up closing their site in defeat.
If you really want to succeed,
you must take the required time to educate yourself.
Creating
a Template
When you begin designing your
web site, your goal should be to create a template that you can use to
create each page of your web site. This will give your entire site the
same look and feel.
A template is simply a web
page "shell" that contains your entire page design, logo, images,
navigational links and a specific area for your content. However, your
template won't contain any content, as each time you create a page with
your template; you'll save it with a different page name.
Formatting
Your Pages
I highly recommend placing
your entire page content within HTML tables. Tables will enable you to
have complete control over your content and how it will be displayed.
For example, you can create
three tables, stacked on top of each other, for each section of
content. The cell padding, cell spacing and border attributes should be
set to "0" to enable your tables to seamlessly flow together. In
addition, the widths for each table should be the same. The top table
would contain your page header content, the middle table would contain
your content and the bottom table would contain your footer content.
As placing your entire page
content within a single table will significantly increase your site's
load time, stacking your tables will enable you to benefit from the
powerful formatting capabilities of tables, while at the same time,
keep your site's load time down.
If you've ever designed a web
page without using tables, you know how limited you are as to how your
content will be displayed. Your text will be displayed right up against
the left border and will span across the entire width of your page
certainly not a good way to design a professional looking web site.
Tables will enable you to
display your content in sections like a newspaper, set up a specific
number of rows and columns, and even place additional tables within
your main content table to create special content sections with colored
backgrounds.
Your
Storefront
Your main page is the
storefront for your business and should specifically let your visitors
know exactly what you're offering. If your potential customer can't
find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time
looking for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never
return. They're visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want
something your site offers. Provide them with what they're looking for
and you'll reap the benefits.
Branding will play a major
role in your success. Make sure you place your company logo and slogan
in the top left corner of each page. This will not only assist your
visitors in remembering your site, but it will also give your pages the
same look and feel.
Instead of trying to cram all
your content into your main page, consider creating sections. These
sections can contain highlights of your information with a link to
further information. You can set your sections up in tables with
colored heading sections for information such as articles, products or
whatever you'd like.
It's much better to keep your
main page down to the most essential elements and link to the detailed
informational pages.
A good rule of thumb is "less
is more." In other words, keep your main page as small as possible and
include your most important elements.
Navigation
When you begin designing your
pages, keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other
than your main. Make sure you include good navigational links on every
page. Place your navigational links together at the top, bottom, left
or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links and
maintain a nicely organized and uniform appearance throughout.
Try to keep the number of
clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your
site down to three or four.
Fonts
One of the most important
parts of a web page is text. The way in which you display the text on
your web page will have a great impact on your success. It can make
your page look very professional or very unprofessional.
When placing text within your
web page, always be consistent with your fonts. In other words, don't
use different fonts throughout your pages. The standard fonts used on
the Internet are Arial and Verdana. The standard text size is 2. Arial
and Verdana are the standard simply because they are the easiest to
read on a computer screen.
Headlines, which require a
larger font size, are a bit different. A popular headline font used is
Georgia,
as it displays nicely in the slightly larger font size.
Background
and Text Colors
Use caution when selecting
your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult
to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always
be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site.
Select your colors very
carefully, as colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your
visitors as well. Bright colors, such as yellow and orange, cause you
to become more cheerful or happy. Colors such as blue and purple have a
calming effect. Dark colors, such as brown and black, have a depressing
effect.
A good rule of thumb is to use
colors based on the type of effect you're trying to achieve. However,
it's always best for your text areas to have a white background with
black text.
Above all else, you must take
the time to educate yourself before you begin. I can't stress this
point enough. If you don't, you're honestly just wasting your time.
Although it may take a little longer, it will be well worth it in the
long run.
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