Web Site Design Articles
Effective Web Site Design (part 1)
When designing an effective web site, these are just some of the many factors you should consider:
- Keep the reader's interest.
An effective web site has text that is written for both the search engines and the reader. If you are uncomfortable doing it yourself, you should seriously consider hiring a professional who does nothing but write text for web sites. Besides making you rank higher in the search engines for targeted keywords, you will keep the interest of your readers and increase your conversion rate.
You should also use bullet points and short sentences instead of long paragraphs on your web site. Most people go to sites and scan quickly to get answers to their questions. Remember, if you can't provide the major benefits of your product or service in 10 seconds, they are gone. - Don't waste reader's time.
When using video or images, if the files are too large or not optimized for the web, this will slow down the upload of your pages. Make sure once you have the image file small enough, the image is still sharp. If you are selling product, you should definitely consider hiring a professional photographer to take the pictures. - Make a web site look professional.
Effective web site design is clean and straightforward. Color selection is important because it creates emotion. For example:
- Red is a very emotionally intense color.
- Orange is not as aggressive as Red, yet stimulates mental activity.
- Yellow is an attention getter and is often associated with food.
- Green is the color of nature and has a strong emotional correspondence with safety and healing.
- Blue symbolizes trust, loyalty, intelligence and produces a calming effect.
- Purple combines the stability of Blue and the energy of Red. Purple is also associated with royalty.
- Black is associated with power, elegance, formality and death. Black gives you the feeling of perspective and depth, but a black background diminishes readability.
- White is associated with innocence, purity, safety and cleanliness. It is highly recommended as a background on web sites.
As a general rule, you should try to design your web site using black text on a white background. This makes it much easier to read. You should also not use more than a three-color design. The use of more than three colors can tend to make the site look amateur and unprofessional. When selecting your colors, you can't go wrong if you stick with complimentary colors on the color wheel. You also want to make sure that you use the specified code for web-safe colors. Otherwise, most custom colors won't look the same in all browsers. - Easy navigation.
Be consistent by using the same navigation format throughout the web site. Make it easy for readers to find what they are looking for within two clicks or they will be gone. - Use dynamic content sparingly.
Just recently, the major search engines have started to index web sites that use dynamic content (i.e., Flash, Javascript, etc.), as long as you don't over do it and adhere to the rules of use when optimizing your web site. For example, when you embed a video, make sure it is not the first thing found in the page code.
It is also not advisable to use animation or sound. If you must, be sure to keep it to a minimum. Specifically when you have music start in the background when someone first opens your web site, be sure the volume is set correctly and that you provide an option to turn it off. Without this option, often times people will leave the web site because they find it intrusive. - Create a "call to action."
If you want to build a "warm" marketing database, one way to do this is by collecting your reader's information from your web site. You can do this by offering a give away (i.e., product, information, etc.) if they fill out a form on the web site. This will also help keep them on your site longer. - Show you are legitimate. Effective web site design clearly lists contact information on all pages. It should be both a physical address and phone number. Someone will be less likely to do business when there is no address or it is a P O Box.
Author Bio: Amy Kesler is owner of In Sync Web Design. She has been designing and developing effective web sites since 2002. Amy has a creative flair, with a broad understanding of business and technology. She listens to what you want and is able to easily create the web site design you have in mind.
Call (913) 825-2587 for a quote from the most effective and affordable website design service in the Kansas City area.
