Design Adaptations

Whether you’re thinking about hiring a designer to create a website for you, or you want to build one yourself, there are some basics you should be aware of. Keeping the following in mind will help you collaborate more effectively with your designer if you choose to use one, or get you started in creating your own site if that’s the road you take.

1. Aesthetics

A website is like the cover of a book. You’re not supposed to judge the contents by the cover, but everyone does it anyway. If your site leaves a poor first impression, you’ll lose credibility with your visitors and they may never return. How can you make a good impression? Your site should employ an attractive color scheme, use a consistent layout, and above all be simple to use. Resist the urge to flood your homepage with links or graphics. Websites full of promos, misplaced navigation, or irrelevant images will only frustrate and/or overwhelm your visitors.

2. A Clear Message

There is a recurring question that visitors ask when arriving at a site. What can I get/learn/do here� Deny them the answer, and they won’t stay long. Your site’s purpose should be obvious. Don’t hide it “beneath the fold” or amidst a ton of banner ads. Your visitors want to know how your site can benefit them – don’t make them guess.

3. Appealing Graphics

Photos, maps, charts and the like are very important in solidifying a message you’re trying to convey. However, they should be used sparingly and only when relevant to your content. Directional aspect should also be considered when placing images. For example, a left or right aligned photo should, in most cases, face the center of your page. Avoid using blurry, dark, faded, or overused clip-art type images.

4. Legibility

Typography can be paramount to a complete design, and entire books on theory and methodology have been written about it. The nutshell version: choose a font and text size which is easy on the eyes. There’s no sense in making your viewer strain to read about the fabulous new widget you’re trying to sell. San-serif fonts work best on the web. Keep paragraphs short (usually 5-7 lines), and don’t be timid about white space. Splitting up large blocks of text helps your reader transition from one point to another, and offers necessary “pauses” when moving through text-heavy pages. Use a text color in high contrast to your background color.

5. Spelling & Grammar

Correct spelling, punctuation and use of grammar is important, so don’t be careless. It all comes back to credibility. Mistakes in this area suggest to viewers that the site owner is lazy or unprofessional. You don’t want to give visitors any reason to be wary of doing business with you. An exception to this might be a blog, because of its personal nature. Bloggers often use slang, and a whimsical conversation style of writing. However, whether you’re doing business or just blogging, keep your writing concise and interesting, and remember to spell check.

6. Speed

Your site should load as quickly as possible. Visitors don’t like to wait. They scan text rather than read it. If your pages load too slow, users will become impatient and hit the back button without a second thought. To keep load times reasonable, avoid using large graphics or flash animation, use CSS when possible to style your pages, and stay away from excessive use of tables for layout. Each and every tag on your page must be parsed by the browser, so of course clean code loads fastest.

7. Consistency

Site-wide elements such as navigation, color scheme, and main content areas should be consistent throughout. Categorize your navigation into easily identifiable sections. It may also be a good idea to put a small, unobtrusive version of your navigation at the bottom of each page so users can quickly jump to another section without having to scroll back up to the top of a page. Using a consistent layout will improve usability, and enable your visitors to quickly find what they’re looking for.

Congratulations, you’ve just plowed your way through a primer which can put you in good with your designer (he’ll know you did some homework). Do-it-yourselfer instead? Call up your buddy at work and brag about how knowledgeable you are on web design! Whichever applies. ;)