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5 Essential Website Design Tips

posted by ADMIN // March 31, 2009 // Build Your Website

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It’s relatively easy to launch a basic website today. However, it’s also relatively easy to construct a site that turns off your visitors due to poor design and usability. To avert this fate, be sure to follow these five essential website design tips when designing, updating or re-launching your website.

1. Keep it Clean: A cluttered page is a page that’s hard to read. A page that’s hard to read is difficult to navigate. A page that is difficult to navigate causes confusion. And a confused site visitor is one who is likely to leave your website. So, keep your web pages clean and clutter-free.

2. Keep Navigation Consistent: As your site visitors navigate through your website, they want to find information easily. If you make them work hard, they are more likely to leave your site looking for a solution elsewhere. To that end, be sure that your navigation system is consistent throughout your site.

3. Keep Ad Ratios in Check: If you must include advertising in your web pages, be respectful of your site visitors by keeping the ratio of valuable content to advertising in content’s favor. Keep the real estate on the page devoted to advertising under 20% of the page.

4. Avoid Image Backgrounds: As you can see from major, successful websites, whether Apple, Amazon or the New York Times, website copy should typically be on a white background. Sites that place their copy on top of image backgrounds tend to scream “amateur.”

5. Avoid Popups: This is a rule to which every website should adhere. No popups. They are annoying. Site visitors do not like them. They indicate that the site owner does not have respect for site visitors. Simple as that.