Website Design Tips

I wish I still had the websites I built ten years ago, we'd have a good laugh!  My sites were a great example of what not to do when designing your website.

If you're just starting with a website you might be compelled to design your site with eye-catching graphics, ads and interesting color schemes, but it's important not to sacrifice your site's quality content and useability for loud, flashy add and graphics that only frustrate and confuse your visitors.

Below are some useful tips and strategies for building a website that will help your visitors find what they are looking without confusing and frustrating them but also give the search engines the information they are looking for as well.

14 Tips for Designing your Website

1. Use lots of white space
Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that, list the subject of your page and below that, expand on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section. Don’t cram a lot of pictures and ads on your site. If you have an ad keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader. Use a dark color for your text and keep it on a white background.

2. Keep animation and flashing objects To A Minimum.
As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is ok but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitor and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Don’t force it on them.

3. Tell Your Viewers What You Want Them To Do.
Be specific in stating what your site is about and what you want your viewers to do on your site.
If you want your viewers to buy something, instruct them to have a look and buy. If you want them to sign up for a newsletter or subscription, instruct them to do that. People like to know exactly what something is about and instructed on what to do. Your visitors don't want to have to figure things out. A confused visitor is a lost visitor.

4. If you have a newsletter or opt-in box, keep it to either the top left or top right - Research has found that businesses get the most sign-ups if their sign-up forms are at the top, above the fold of the page. Anything you put at the bottom right of your website will be noticed the least. Interesting, but true. Save that space for things you're not worried about anyone seeing.

5. Do Your Keyword Research
Think about the words users would type to find your pages. These are the keywords you should optimize each page of your website for. To date, Wordtracker is still the best tool for finding accurate, highly used keywords. Don't spam the search engines by overdoing it, instead use the words accurately and effectively on the page.

6. Every page of your site should contain an ‘about’ link.
Anyone visiting your site should be able to find out about who you are and what you are about. Visitors will feel better about doing business with you or taking advice from you if they have background on you. Always include your business address (a P.O. Box is ok) and phone number and email address as well. This lets viewers know that you are serious about your business and that you welcome contact. The search engines will find favor with you as well.

7. Include a ‘Privacy’ Link
Viewers want reassurance that you have a policy that follows privacy guidelines. They want to know that you will not sell or give away their information. In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners won’t do business with you unless you have it.

8. Keep your links in blue.
This isn't a must and why does that matter you might say?

It’s an expectation that viewers have along with the links being underlined. There’s certainly no law that says they need to be blue but people spend a lot of time on the internet and it’s good practice to keep your navigation consistent and recognizable. If you do use another color simply keep it consistent.

9. Keep navigation consistent.
What you do on your index page should be done the same way on the rest of your site’s pages. Keep the colors consistent. Don’t force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars and links the same for each page.

10. Use Understandable Buttons and links.
Title your links appropriately. Don’t use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to sports equipment don’t label the link ‘Great Outdoors’, call it ‘Sports Equipment’ and make sure your page is titled the same. For example, if your page is about 'dog food recipe' and, after your research, you found that your best keyword for that page was 'homemade dog food recipe' then be sure to title the page as 'www.yoursite.com/homemade-dog-food-recipe.html' and make sure all hyperlinks on your site referring to that page are labeled 'homemade dog food recipe'. Keep things consistent and relevant.

11. Add Fresh Content Often
Your site won't have anything to offer your visitors or the search engines if you don't provide useful, informative, interesting information, tools and services. Notice I added tools and services. This is important. You don't just want your visitors to simply visit your site, you want them to USE it. It's what keeps them coming back.

12. Use a Site Map
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages. Most search engines nowadays base rankings on whether you have a site map or not.

13. Keep Links and Advertisements to a Minimum
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 50) and advertisements should also be only one or two to a page. If you want to do some advertising on your site, it has been noted that text links actually receive a higher click through rate than banners. Why? Probably because clicking on a text link doesn't make the viewer feel like their clicking on an advertisement.

14. Carefully Optimize each page of your Website
The search engines rank web pages not web sites so good web page optimization is critical meaning you must use unique title, description and keyword tags for each of your webpages. These tags must accurately describe what your page is about. Additionally keep your navigation consistent on each page and make sure all links work.

15. Use quality website builders
Building a great website starts with quality site builders that come with good website design tools built into them.  Using these types of site builders helps you automatically create optimal navigation, use your keywords effectively, optimize each of your web pages effectively and keep your links working correctly.  If you need to create a professional website but have no site building experience these easy website builders are intuitive and have all the tools and website design tips you'll need to easily create professional websites