| 12 web design tips of christmas |
| Written by Lucy Whiter | |||
| Tuesday, 14 December 2010 16:47 | |||
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1. White space & no busy backgrounds.
2. Use a web friendly font It's really important when designing your website to make sure your buttons look like things that people can click on otherwise navigating around your website will prove difficult. Using a button design that is consistent but that stands out from body text and static objects will make it easier for users to navigate around your website. 4. Keep to a selected colour palette Colours are a really important part of website design as it plays a major role in how the design is perceived by your audience. Using a simple colour palette when designing your website will give it a classy feel and if used correctly will lead your viewers eye easily around the site. 5. Stick to a structure Creating a strong structure for your website is another tool you can use to make your website easy to navigate. Sticking to a similar layout on every page and keeping everything consistent will make your user feel more comfortable. 6. Keep text to a minimum When someone visits your website they don't want to be overwhelmed with pages and pages of text. A smaller amount of text presented in a clear and concise way, will make a reader far more likely to actually read it. Explaining things through photos, illustrations or even animations is a much more interesting way of conveying information than huge amounts of copy people won't want to read. 7. Know your audience When designing your website one of the most important things to remember is to think about who will be visiting your site. The tone and feel of a website will be very different depending on who it's aimed at. For example a website for children will be playful and visually stimulating, however a website like Amazon needs to be a lot more about conveying a lot of information in the clearest and simplest way. 8. Use only one or two fonts Keeping the number of different fonts you use to one or two will keep your website clean, simple and much clearer to read. If people can't read the information easily they won't bother and instead will find another website where they can. It will also give your website a professional look that it wouldn't have if you use half the font book. It's as simple as that! 9. Avoid blinking or flashing text like the plague! Animated text is harder to read than static text. Text that moves so fast that you can't read it is not good. Flashing text that constantly distracts the eye from the rest your site is even worse! There is only one thing that should be considered when using flashing or animated text and that is, is this enhancing the readability of my text and the message it's trying to convey? If the answer is no then it's just a distraction and it doesn't need to be there. 10. Make your navigation logical and easy to understand Navigation is what is what gets your user around your website so it needs to be logical and easy to understand. What's the point of having lots of great content if your user can't find it? Spend time before starting to design your website thinking about how the navigation on your website will work and what is the simplest way of guiding your users to where they want to go, with the minimum of steps. 11. Don't centre everything Centred text is harder to read because the starting position of each line changes, making the reader have to work much harder to find where each line begins to continue reading. Numbered and bulleted lists should almost always be left-aligned as well to aid in quickly scanning the list. 12. Make contact information visible on every page If readers like what they see on your website, and are interested in getting some more information, they are going to look for your contact details and making these visible and easy to find is really important. Not all users will spend time searching your site for your contact information, again if they can't find what they are looking for they will go elsewhere.
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