Anybody who has advertised on Google Ad words or Overture knows what it costs to generate leads, build a sales pipeline and convert the orders. The cost per click for the keyword ‘web design’ can be as high as £2 per click. Try to generate enough good leads and your pay per click budget could run into the thousands. Obviously getting the leads is not enough to secure web design orders. A lot of time and money can go into following up on the leads and converting these to web design orders. There is no doubt about it: securing first time customers is hard work and expensive. A viable business option is to generate web design orders through word of mouth. Whilst anybody would probably with this statement, the question remains…how do we sell web design effectively through word of mouth?

The obvious answer is by getting yourself known within the web design industry and by your potential customers. There are a number of ways of achieving this objective. Your existing satisfied web design customers are an excellent starting point. Notice I say ‘satisfied’ customers. Although it is our aim to have satisfied customers, it is not always possible to keep all our customers always happy. Let’s face it, there are some web design customers out there that you just cannot please, no matter how hard you try. Yet, every web design company should strive very hard to keep excellent relationships with existing customers because there is no better reference for your web design business than your happy clients.

Assuming you do have a reasonably good web design customer base, use it. From time to time call these customers and ask them how they are doing with their web sites. You will often find that a past customer needs some kind of web design updates and additional work done to their web site. What’s more, by keeping in touch with your clients, you are reminding them that you are here if ever they need web design work. People in business talk and anybody searching for a web design company will more than likely talk to a friend or partner before starting to search for some anonymous web design company on search engines. Somebody who has heard good things about your web design services will find it compelling to get in touch and at least find out about your web design offer. People instinctively trust their friends if the later are genuinely happy with your web design services.

The bottom line is, your existing happy web design customers are your best references and your ‘word of mouth’ source of web design business. Whilst we do need to spend resources and time into advertising for new web design business, let us not lose sight of our portfolio of clients and the potential web design business that they can bring us.

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When people search for a product or service on the Web, they normally visit several websites before they come to a decision which company to buy from. Therefore, it’s important that your website remains on the user’s memory at first sight. Apart from the look, your web design has to be equally striking. Your web design should provide good content and load quickly. However, you should ensure that your web design looks different from your competition. Otherwise, people may not want to choose you and instead secure their services.

It is sometime tempting to look at your competitors’ websites and assume that yours should have the same web design and content. It can certainly be useful to look at your competitors’ websites. But if your website has a similar web design, then there is no reason for people to pick you instead. In fact, there’s a real danger you look like a cheap copy of them. Your business should have a unique selling point (USP), which separates you from your competition. For instance, your items might be cheaper, your delivery might be quicker or you may even have a better product range than anyone else.

So, make sure that this USP can fit well into your web design and across your website. Your visitor wants to know why they should choose you over anyone else. It’s your job to make sure that your web design answers this question clearly. Making a good web design is a skill that requires both creative flair and technical knowledge. It is as well time consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to add web pages to your website without worrying about the web design? Well, there is a solution to this. An easy way to edit pages is through the content management system (CMS). CMS is used in web design to allow the website owner to add content to his website without the need to know HTML.

Moreover, through good web design solutions, the website owner can log on to a password protected web page to make the changes he wants. As such, the web design industry can provide some cheap CMS packages such as Adobe Contribute which runs as an application on a computer. Simple CMS packages might only let you edit words and headings on existing web pages. More complex CMS packages are readily used in web design to add pages or even upload images. In web design, setting up a CMS is more complicated than creating a web page. Unless you are an experienced web design professional, you may need to hire one to effectively set up a CMS for you.

A huge advantage of having a CMS is that anyone within your company can update your website. You could even assign various people different sections to update on your website. This said, it is clear that web design is improving at fast pace and will keep on improving during years to come. In other words, good web design technologies can make your website run faster and at the same time prove to be more profitable to you.

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Web designing is the “art” or creating a visual or a layout for a web site/page. Web design is all about creating a good web site. There are different types of Website designing are:

STATIC:

The static website is the simplest way to showcase your product or business online. It is the easiest type of website to set up, but making changes to static websites require web programming knowledge.

DYNAMIC

Dynamic websites are content management systems. Information on the page, such as text, images, hyperlinks, banner ads, etc. can be changed by the administrator at any time, without the need for web programming knowledge.

Administrators have full control of the contents on the website through a personal panel, inaccessible to the site’s viewers. This gives the administrator the power to completely manage the website. Dynamic websites also make it possible for viewers to interact with the website, if a client wishes it.

FEATURES OF WEBSITE DESIGNING

· Navigation is at the heart of any good Web design. Website navigation is a crucial part of website design. Visitors find their way around website using navigation links.

· Animation has given a new outlook to sites on the web and hence it has gained the vital position and requirement in increasing site traffic. Images and animation are used with flash, tables, frames, etc. Flash website provides all necessary information to the user, in an animated way through multimedia presentation, which makes website more unique and attractive.

· Contrast colors are one of the most important elements of web design today. Color affects the emotion of the audience, and emotion drives decision-making .In websites color are used with the help of HTML and color chart to make the webpage more attractive.

· Content is the process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing, and editing information for publication on web sites.

· Search Engine Optimization analyzes and enhances the ranking website.

· Website design provides clean, dynamic, interactive, fresh and user friendly layout.

The function of website designing is to create a web page using Html, Xml mark up languages or PHP, Java script and many other languages and scripts that are used to make a website designing.

EGB systems is a professional Copywriter of EGB Systems & Solutions Inc. He written many articles about Software Development Services, search engine optimization, Web Design, Virtual Assistant, Data Processing, Medical Services, Web Hosting, ECommerce Services, Etc. For more Information Visit us at: http://www.egbsystems.com/software_design_and_development.html

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If you are serious about embarking on a career in the web field, here are 10 steps to getting you there without having to go to school for many years.  With any book or any class you take, make sure it includes hands-on exercises!

1) Start with a basic Design Fundamentals class
It is a good idea to take a basic class that teaches you the basics of good design theory and how text and image work together.  You can look into any local college that offers vocational courses.  Make sure it’s a class that makes you do homework and design work.

2) Get the Adobe Creative Suite
Get your hands on a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite.  It is not cheap, but it encompasses all the programs you’ll need to know to do the job.

3) Start with Photoshop
Start with Adobe Photoshop and learn everything you can by taking online tutorials, and getting a book at the library or bookstore to practice all the techniques and ways of doing things.  Pay special attention to image manipulation, slicing and saving for the web.

4) Learn Best Web Site Design Practices
Get a book on web design best practices and learn about the aesthetics of good web design.  This means you’ll learn what looks good and why.  It also means you’ll know why certain fonts, colors and layouts are not good for web design.  Always know the rules before you break them. This is your foundation.  Web interface design is a job in itself.

5) HTML and CSS – Learn to code by hand!
You’ll need to know html and CSS in order to truly be able to master the various browsers and how they behave.  There are a lot of good online tutorials that will teach you the basics for free.  Learn everything you can for free.  Then when you’ve got a really good handle of the basics get a book on CSS and become an expert in coding CSS.

6) Dreamweaver
Once you have mastered code, it’s time to teach yourself Dreamweaver.  Then you’ll see Dreamweaver as more of an aide to your coding skills.  With Dreamweaver, you get an ftp tool and you can look at your code and design at the same time and preview the published code. 

7) JavaScript
By this time you should start to feel you have a handle on creating a basic decent static website.  To take your skills further, you’ll need to start learning JavaScript (get a book) on at least a basic level.  Once you’ve grasped some basics, you’ll be able to find plenty of open-source code out there you can copy to use on your site.  But before you know the basics, you won’t know how to incorporate copied code or how to troubleshoot it.

Flash and Illustrator
Technical Lead has a great Learn Flash program on the web that you can teach yourself from scratch to advanced level everything you need to know about Flash web site design.  Also at this point you should start playing around with Illustrator and learning the basics with a book.

9) PHP, .NET and Java
By now you will want to start learning how the back-end works.  Start with PHP.  The best way to learn PHP is to take a class.  If you feel you are hopeless at this part, don’t worry, with the skills you’ve already acquired to this point, you can make a great living.  But knowing how to incorporate your design and front-end with these languages can be an important skill.

10) Create websites
Start to make practice websites and make yourself a portfolio.  You can make websites for individuals who need one but don’t have any money so you have some good active URLs to show.  Once you have a great portfolio that shows good design and good coding, you are on your way to a great web design job!

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You might have come across several web design tips and practices which are general in nature or you might have come across some best  E commerce tips and practices which  are programming oriented. But there is a very little material on the Specific web designing tips and best practices for Ecommerce website. Does good Web Design has anything to do with E commerce website, Yes in deed, this answer is quite common as good design is needed for almost all websites,  for the users to hang on to the site or visit the site again. How ever there are several precautions and practices that one should adopt while choosing an already created template design or a new custom design for ecommerce website. As we continue this discussion you well understand the need for a good design for ecommerce site, when I mean good design I not only mean visually appealing but also one which has features to attract the users to the website and make visitors prefer your site over other sites.

The best way to make you understand the need for good web design for ecommerce site it to walk you through the basic and the skeleton steps that one must follow to develop a successful e commerce website and at each step I will be explaining  the importance of design. Skeleton steps will be like these

The Beginning Step -Find out the purpose

At this step one should start determining what he wants as this helps in finding out the target audience, does there need for  B2c, B2b Ecommerce applications or online auction, community buy  and sell or any other kind of buying and selling application.

Careful study and analysis will help you determine what are the latest trends and technologies in developing such applications, how ever the main focus at this step is to find what you want the website to do. Following questions will help you understand what is needed.

•    Whom you are targeting?
•    What does the site offer target audience?
•    Who are your competitors and how the market is structured in the specific industry?

Second Step – Deciding on the look and feel of the website

Answers derived from the questions asked in the earlier step will help what you need. You might have arrived at what you want and whom you are targeting, now look for such similar sites already existing on the internet. Try to understand why they are successful and how they chose the images, graphics and colors. At this stage you might have decided on colors and what kind of images you need. I found many sites flooded with images with little importance to products. It’s very important to choose few images carrying greater meaning. Review your color choice to see it matches the target audience, always choose clear and neat looking colors that sooth the eyes of the visitors. And now about the Logo, Logo depicts the idea of what you are trying to sell and what’s your identity. Put across all these ideas to the designer who is going to design the actual design template. E commerce Web design is a specific service area of the web design jargon. Choosing a specialist will help you put across your ideas easily.

Third step –Creating Web pages and choosing Underlining Technology

In this step you need to decide on the technology for implementing the<a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://ecommerce.warriorzinfotech.com/”> E commerce solutions</a>. To start with, website design should be in par with the latest standards and practices to ensure quality, as part of this its preferred to develop the web site in pure “CSS” using “div tags” instead of going for standard html tables as they make the web pages heavy .Usage of images should be elegant and justifiable to ensure fast loading website. Ensure that the html and CSS code is W3C validated. This will ensure web pages appear consistent in all web browsers with out any problem. How ever if you come across any cross browser issues you can write separate CSS for each such browser to ensure uniformity.

Most of the users come to the websites but leave the site because of the unhelpful structure of the website. No matter how good looking website you designed if it’s not easy to use it won’t retain the visitors for long. Its very important to present the required information with minimum number of clicks. Proper choice of categories and the position of displaying categories of the products is very important.

Now the Decision about the software technology, the good thing about developing ecommerce applications is that you have lots of open source e commerce software available which are optimized and can be customized as per your needs. Choice of programming language depends on your existing resources and also on your budget for the application. Innovative ideas of presenting the information about the products will help attract the visitors trying to understand the products.

Fourth Step –Effective Project management and ensuring quality

You as the Product owner should manage your project proceedings to ensure project does not overrun your budgets. You should be innovative in presenting your website and should look in to every detail of  all aspects of the website. Application has to be tested again and again to ensure there are no bugs and application functions as desired. Similar graphics to that of the website should be used for marketing news letters or sending mails to customers regarding the status of the orders.

Fifth Step – Live at Last

Now finally after completing the website, check to see it has all the functionalities of what are expected or document in earlier stage of the project once done application will be ready for release. It is suggested to make a Beta release of the application; you can mark the site as Beta Release by putting a beta release below the logo such that It appears on all pages of the website. This will help to preserve customer confidence even the application fails to perform as expected. After sufficient live Testing and customer activity you can make a final version.

Here ends the story of successful e commerce website what follows after this is adulation for the story and the story writer that would be you in the form of wealth.

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You might have come across several web design tips and practices which are general in nature or you might have come across some best E commerce tips and practices which are programming oriented. But there is a very little material on the Specific web designing tips and best practices for Ecommerce website. Does good Web Design has anything to do with E commerce website, Yes in deed, this answer is quite common as good design is needed for almost all websites, more visit to :- www.automatic-content.comfor the users to hang on to the site or visit the site again. How ever there are several precautions and practices that one should adopt while choosing an already created template design or a new custom design for ecommerce website. As we continue this discussion you well understand the need for a good design for ecommerce site, when I mean good design I not only mean visually appealing but also one which has features to attract the users to the website and make visitors prefer your site over other sites.
The best way to make you understand the need for good web design for ecommerce site it to walk you through the basic and the skeleton steps that one must follow to develop a successful e commerce website and at each step I will be explaining the importance of design. Skeleton steps will be like these
The Beginning Step -Find out the purpose
At this step one should start determining what he wants as this helps in finding out the target audience, more visite to :-www.javascript-magic.comdoes there need for B2c, B2b Ecommerce applications or online auction, community buy and sell or any other kind of buying and selling application.
Careful study and analysis will help you determine what are the latest trends and technologies in developing such applications, how ever the main focus at this step is to find what you want the website to do. Following questions will help you understand what is needed.
• Whom you are targeting?
• What does the site offer target audience?
• Who are your competitors and how the market is structured in the specific industry?
Second Step – Deciding on the look and feel of the website
Answers derived from the questions asked in the earlier step will help what you need. You might have arrived at what you want and whom you are targeting, now look for such similar sites already existing on the internet. Try to understand why they are successful and how they chose the images, graphics and colors. At this stage you might have decided on colors and what kind of images you need. I found many sites flooded with images with little importance to products. It’s very important to choose few images carrying greater meaning. Review your color choice to see it matches the target audience, always choose clear and neat looking colors that sooth the eyes of the visitors. And now about the Logo, Logo depicts the idea of what you are trying to sell and what’s your identity. Put across all these ideas to the designer who is going to design the actual design template. E commerce Web design is a specific service area of the web design jargon. Choosing a specialist will help you put across your ideas easily.
Third step -Creating Web pages and choosing Underlining Technology
In this step you need to decide on the technology for implementing the E commerce solutions. To start with, website design should be in par with the latest standards and practices to ensure quality, as part of this its preferred to develop the web site in pure “CSS” using “div tags” instead of going for standard html tables as they make the web pages heavy .Usage of images should be elegant and justifiable to ensure fast loading website. Ensure that the html and CSS code is W3C validated. This will ensure web pages appear consistent in all web browsers with out any problem. How ever if you come across any cross browser issues you can write separate CSS for each such browser to ensure uniformity.
Most of the users come to the websites but leave the site because of the unhelpful structure of the website. No matter how good looking website you designed if it’s not easy to use it won’t retain the visitors for long. Its very important to present the required information with minimum number of clicks. Proper choice of categories and the position of displaying categories of the products is very important.
Now the Decision about the software technology, the good thing about developing ecommerce applications is that you have lots of open source e commerce software available which are optimized and can be customized as per your needs. Choice of programming language depends on your existing resources and also on your budget for the application. Innovative ideas of presenting the information about the products will help attract the visitors trying to understand the products.
Fourth Step -Effective Project management and ensuring quality
You as the Product owner should manage your project proceedings to ensure project does not overrun your budgets. You should be innovative in presenting your website and should look in to every detail of all aspects of the website. Application has to be tested again and again to ensure there are no bugs and application functions as desired. Similar graphics to that of the website should be used for marketing news letters or sending mails to customers regarding the status of the orders.
Fifth Step – Live at Last
Now finally after completing the website, check to see it has all the functionalities of what are expected or document in earlier stage of the project once done application will be ready for release. It is suggested to make a Beta release of the application; you can

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Don’t bother with splash pages.

A splash page is normally a pointless page people put on their websites as an introduction. The page normally contains some sort of image on with a big click here to enter sign, or sometimes people don’t say anything and just hope you will click on the picture to enter their site. Splash pages are fairly pointless and it is just creating more work for your visitor as they have to click the mouse button an extra time just to see the content of your site. By removing the splash page the visitor can get to see the best parts of your site straight away, without having to wait for a pointless page to load.

Keep your navigation simple.

To put it simply if your navigation is too complicated and people don’t understand how to get around your site this is a huge web design fault. If a visitor doesn’t know how to navigate around your site they will get frustrated and end up leaving. Keep your navigation simple and try to avoid using scripts or complicated flash based menus, not all browsers support scripts, so some of your visitors might be missing out on important.

Keep your paragraphs reasonable readable lengths.

Although having lots of relative and informative content on your website is good, it is a bad idea to have the blocks of text to big. Not everyone likes reading and to much can deter a visitor. If you keep your paragraphs in reasonable lengths it is much easier for a visitor to read and absorb.

Use CSS for style.

Make sure your text is readable by using a standard font which is compatible with other systems. While some fonts may look good on your computer other people might not have that font installed. It is good web design practice to use CSS when building you site. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are a perfect way to set and adjust your websites font and size settings. The great thing about using CSS is that you can change the look of your whole site simply by editing the one file.

Test how your site looks in other web browsers

When you are building your site and still in the web design stage it is important to check how it looks on other browsers, just because it looks fine in internet explorer doesn’t mean it looks good on Firefox or Opera. A lot of people use alternative browsers and if the website looks like a complete mess then you will loose that visitor for good. You can check your websites web design to ensure it complies with the web standards at the w3.org website. Validating the page will help to ensure it is cross browser compatible.

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Web sites have been in existence for more than a decade and the idea of web design has changed considerably during the years. In the nineties, you could find web pages with web design as simple as text for its entire body with a graphic or two strewn here and there. Such web design was perfectly acceptable then and frequently relied only on tools as simple as notepad to create. Nowadays, most web sites require considerably more advanced web design, often calling for entire teams of web content creators to make them. If you’re new to the field of creating web sites, how do you learn to make web sites that you would truly like to visit?

First of all, you need to visit many web sites and be critical of them. Ask yourself what elements of their web design impressed you? What elements of their web design did not seem too functional or were just plain ugly? By knowing what it is that you want, you could be taking the first steps to becoming a really good web master.

Next, you just need to learn the basics. Much of web design coding during the nineties for these web sites still function as the basics for these new more colorful web sites. Yes, web design still relies on good old HTML. Visit any tutorial online and after an afternoon, you’re sure to be acquainted enough with HTML to make your own site, albeit a very simple one.

Now, with this knowledge of the basics of HTML, you can revisit your favorite web sites and see how it is that they were created. Use the browser’s ability to see the coding for these sites and you’ll find out what web design tricks they employed. Did the site use fancy moving graphics that responded to your mouse’s clicks? Then it might just have used flash in its web design. Did it have music embedded into it as mp3? Then find out just how the web master did this using your browser’s view layout feature. Any of the best web sites’ web design tools are always just there, ready for you to see how they were put to use.

After this, the next step would be to emulate the sites’ features. It’s not too difficult as you can just copy anything using copy and paste. Place these codes into the site you’re trying to create. Don’t be greedy and copy every feature from every site all at once. You need to start small with one feature at a time. That way, if a feature does not work, you’ll know just where the problem is.

It’s not all about using the web design features, though. You should only use web features that are useful for your sites’ purposes. Are you building a site only for yourself? Then try to have web design that expresses your self. Are you building a site for your families’ company? Then maybe you could keep it simple and straight to the point, just giving the company’s details. After uploading your web site, give yourself a couple of days rest and look back at it. That way, you’ll have a fresh take on your own web design; good luck.

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Use these 7 Basics of Good Web Design to improve your web site and make it stand out from the competition.

Whether you are just starting a web design project, looking at revamping an existing site, or just wanting to double check the usability of your current web site you should consider these 7 Basics of Good Web Design.

These Basics are aimed at new visitors/customers, your repeat customers will be judging your web site on different values. Just like wearing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, these basics will help you pick out the “look” of your web site so that you make a good first impression.

1. Fast Loading Web Site – Any way you look at it, a fast loading page should be your number 1 concern. The web is all about speed, fast searches, fast purchases, fast information. You can’t have any of that with a slow loading page. Ask yourself this question, have you ever been on Google doing a search for something important and a link you clicked on didn’t open up immediately? What did you do? Patiently wait for the page to open or move onto the next link on the list? My favorite sites open almost immediately.

So, a few suggestions: Make sure that your images are properly optimized. Don’t use very many large images, save those for a different page. Keep any auto-running multimedia to a minimum, offer links to run media instead. Check your code for anything else that could affect your page loading times. Since text loads almost instantly go ahead and use all the text you want, just keep everything else under control.

2. No Meaningless Splash Page – Do you appreciate a fancy animation page that doesn’t tell you anything and you have to wait for before the web site will open? Neither do I. The last thing I want once I find an interesting site is to wait through some animation before getting to the first page. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want multimedia on a site, I do. I just don’t want an animation before the first page that forces me to wait for it to finish before getting onto the site. Its like having to wait for a salesperson to finish their memorized speech before you can ask them a question. No thanks! I like animation, just in the right place and at the right time. Plus if I am a returning customer I will have already seen that animation and don’t need to see it again.

My recommendation is to use a smaller animation contained in your main landing page which also includes your main message and links to the rest of your site. It will make for a faster loading page (smaller file) and your visitors can go ahead with accessing your site without having to wait for the animation to finish.

One final note, never, ever put your logo as the only content on your landing page with a link that says “Enter Site”. This just screams Unprofessional and will drive away potential visitors in droves. The last thing I want to do is to click on another link just to get into the site. This is a total waste of my time. I usually will skip a site if I see this.

3. No Annoying Web Gimmicks – Now that you have your visitor on your site quickly the one thing you don’t want to do is to drive them away just as quickly. So, don’t put anything annoying on that first page. No loud background music that makes them quickly hit the volume control or the back button on their browser. No flashing animations while they are trying to read your content. No popup, flyout, expanding ads that cover your home page. Basically leave the gimmicks alone until you are sure that your visitor will stay on your site. Most casual visitors will leave your site in just a few seconds, no sense on driving them away more quickly.

Multimedia is great on a web site, just don’t bombard your visitor with it first thing. If you want audio then put in a nice picture with a link, like a picture of yourself with text saying something like “Let me tell you how to make $50,000 this month!” If they are interested they will click on the link and listen to your message, if they are not interested in audio then you should be using a different pitch anyway.

Also, monitor what advertisers are putting on your site if you sell ad space. I am sure you have seen those ads with the animated dancing figure, cute the first time you see it. But after seeing it 10,000 times with every imaginable character I have added the company to a list I keep of companies I will never do business with. So their animation has gone from “look at me” to “you annoy me” in my mind. Ads like these will impact your visitor’s experience. So even if your site is perfectly designed, one misplaced ad can ruin all of your hard work.

4. Have a Clear Message – Too many web sites are a mish-mash of content. This is especially true of blog pages. Certain types of sites lend themselves to stream of consciousness content, but most don’t. Make it easy for your viewer to understand what your web site is about, don’t make them guess. Have a clear topic headline, followed by clear and concise text. This is also where a picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture directly pertains to your message.

You want your visitor to be able to quickly understand what your message is. If they like your message they will take the time to read the rest of your page and look around your web site. If they don’t like your page, then it won’t do you any good having them stay on your site anyway. So, don’t make your visitors guess, let them know what you are about quickly and cleanly and you will have happy visitors. And when thinking about a sales page, a happy customer is a buying customer.

5. Coordinated Design – This one should be self evident, but it is surprising how many sites change their design for every page. You want your visitor to be comfortable in your site and one way to achieve that is by having a coordinated web design. Having a consistent logo, using a consistent color scheme, keeping your navigation in the same place. All of these help to create a coordinated design. This does not mean that you can’t change colors or the “Look” on different segments of your site, but if you do, the changes should not be so drastic that it feels like you have moved on to a different site.

If you select one place for your logo, one place for your navigation, one look for your buttons or other common graphic elements and stick with those then you will be well on your way to a coordinated design. If you change colors for a different section, but keep the same logo location, the same navigation location, the same button shape then your visitors will not become lost as they move from page to page.

6. Easy Navigation – Once you have grabbed your visitors attention you want them to be able to easily move around the different areas of your web site. This is done with easy to use navigation. There are three standard, accepted locations for navigation elements on a web page: along the top, on the left side, and at the bottom. I will usually put my main navigation either along the top or along the left side. I will then put text based navigation at the bottom of the page, this text based navigation is more for the search engines than anything else, but it also makes it easy for your visitors to move to the next page when they have reached the bottom of the current page.

Most people start reading a page from the top left and then read towards the bottom right. So navigation at the left or top will be seen as soon as someone enters your page. Also navigation at the left or top will not move or change position if the browser window is adjusted in size. The worst thing you can do is to put your main navigation on the right side of the page and have your page set for a large screen size. Let’s say that your page is set for 1024 across with the navigation on the right, and someone views your page at 800 across, they will not see your navigation at all. The left side of your page will show perfectly, but the right side will be hidden outside of their viewing area. Of course by using floating or popup menus you can overcome some of these design limitations and keep your navigation visible at all times.

Unless you know that your audience will enjoy it, don’t use Mystery Navigation. This is where your navigation is hidden within images, or spaced around the web page in some mysterious random order. This can be fun on gaming sites, or social networking sites, but in most cases the navigation should be easy to see and easy to use. If you do want to use Mystery Navigation I would recommend keeping the text based navigation at the bottom of the page, just in case.

7. Have a “Complete” web site – And finally, no one wants to go to a web site only to find that the site is “Under Construction” and the content they are looking for is not there. These are words that you should never use. If a section of your web site is not ready for prime time yet, then simply don’t show it yet. It is better to have your site look complete and professional, then to have it look like a work in progress that should not be up on the web yet.

You can easily tell your visitors that you will be having more content in the future without looking like your site is unfinished. Just use phrases like “Content Updated Weekly” or “New Products Added Monthly”. Both of these will tell your visitors that it would be worth their time to come back and visit at later, but neither one will make your site look unfinished. So no matter how small your web site is, give the impression that you have taken the time to complete the site before putting it up on the internet, this makes for a more professional presentation and a better visitor experience.

In Closing – By following these simple 7 Basics of Good Web Design you will be well on your way to having an easy to use and successful web presence. Just keep in mind what you look for when you first land on a web page after doing a web search in Google or Yahoo, or other search engine. If you want fast loading pages, make sure your pages load fast. If you want to be able to find what you are looking for quickly and easily then make sure you have easy navigation. Just keep your first time visitor in mind, put yourself in their web shoes and make your web site an enjoyable place to visit and success should follow.

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Web designers should always design websites which are informative and easy to use.  A good aesthetic impression also helps and importantly you should always aim for a good user experience which causes web visitors to come back time after time.  Even if  your are selling the hottest product on the planet if your website is badly designed you won’t be able to sell anything at all because web visitors will be driven away from your site by the unappealing layout or poor website design.

When web designers talk about “good web design”, they don’t just mean good graphic design.   A professional web designer will be able to highlight and explain the many components which contribute to a good overall website design. For example, accessibility, W3C compliant code, un-confusing design & layout, user friendly interface, overall user experience and of course not forgetting professional graphic design.

For the sake of enforcing good design standards we can back up our argument by showing or illustrating some bad web design elements which can still be seen on many websites even today.  Check your own site against the checklist below and if anything listed below is a feature of your own site its time to hire a Bath website designer to help get your site up to speed.

1) Background Sound

Barring band websites, MP3 music download sites or anything music related… looping background music should always be avoided.  It may sound good at first, but just think if you had a larger site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browsed to another page on your website, the annoying background music started playing again?  Most visitors are inclined to turn off their speakers or leave your site altogether.  What’s more, background music just adds to the visitor’s annoyance when viewing your site… for example, users on dial up will have to wait longer just to view your site and for all your web pages to load.

2) Text sizes which are too big or too small

As we know there is more to good website design than just good graphic design… user friendliness and web accessibility have a large part to play as well.  All website text should be legible and reasonably sized to allow your web visitors to read it without a strain on their eyes.  Never mind how great your web content is or your sales copy, if it’s not legible you won’t be selling anything anytime soon.

3) Annoying Pop ups

Pop ups or pop up windows (yes they are still out there) and they are so annoying to most users when they display advertisements that most agree they are simply not worth paying any attention to.  Consequently most users close them immediately the moment one ‘pops up’ especially if it has gotten past your pop up blocker (most people have these installed these days).  Just think about it this way… you have a very important portion of your site to illustrate or a message to convey and you put it in a pop up which simply gets closed 99% of the time when it appears on a web visitor’s screen?  Your web site can lose its functionality right there and then.

To conclude, let us remind ourselves that as web designers bath our job is to make sure that websites do what they are intended to do and to do it effectively.  It would be foolhardy to allow some very small mistakes from preventing your site from functioning at the optimum level.

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