Advanced software tools have made web designing as easy as A B C. In minutes you can create a complete web site with beautiful pages. But as it is said everything comes with positive as well as negative attributes. It has become a common experience that a website that is perfect in look & feels with a particular browser and a particular screen-resolution, looks poor when seen with a different browser or different resolution. This reason alone can cost you your potential customers as the distorted pages will never be seen properly by the intended surfers. Check out these points to avoid any such happening with your website:
oWeb designing is a perfect combination of creativity & technical expertise and both are equally important. Here few important & effective guidelines are given from the point of view of web designers. These are not only simple but also proven to their results.
oNo doubt, a single picture is equivalent to hundreds of words and they enhance the look of a page. But it is not sensible to overload your page with images. If an image is taking more than 5 second to open up, then the surfer will most probably click away elsewhere. So, it's better to use appropriate number of images with aggregate page size less than 30k so that the page loads in time.
oEach file placed on the page needs a separate HTTP request to the server. So, a lot of small images will also slow down the loading of a page.
oIn case you want to place amazing buttons for navigation, try new things but remember that your effort will be ruined if a page does not load in time. So, don't forget to provide an Alternate Text for each image that you use for navigation. Though it seems little but ALT text can help such users immensely.
oThe unwanted images are ignored to a certain extent and this is revealed by modern browsers that offer users a choice to turn off images.
oDesigners should be concerned for navigability & functionality before artistic excellence. Your site with great artistic look is of no use if users are not comfortable with its functionality & are confused about navigation.
oAvoid Mystery Meat Navigation that irritates the user as links will appear only when mouse hovers over the image. This way, user finds it tiresome to move the mouse overall to search the links.
oKeep your site as simple as possible.
oWhenever the whole page is within a Table, the page cannot appear unless the entire table is downloaded. You can avoid this by splitting the table into two tables; one below the other. Make the top one, a short table that displays just the page header and a few navigation links. This prepares the user to wait for more thereby preventing him from switching over to other sites.
oStay away from browser specific features. Such features tend to displease the user as they may be supported by one browser but not by another.
oMake the user sole authority for creating a new browser window. Avoid popping up new windows to facilitate the user. Though pages containing the links list can be opened in a new window, but user should be aforementioned.
oKeep away from using ultra jazzy fonts to catch the attention of users as it is not necessary that they would be having all advance fonts installed on their machine. You can also make your page legible & attractive by using simple fonts with right font size.
oAnother new trick is popular these days to make your users aware of their location at the web site. This kind of functional bar is really helpful to users and guides them across all possible paths within the site.
oDon't rush to "revolutionary plug-ins" and stay clear of them as most of the users don't have these plug-ins installed and they even don't bother. It's better to use Macromedia's Shockwave Flash plug-in, which is available onto most computers today, and thus of no harm in using vector animation on your site.
oYou can use Java in so many ways to enhance your web pages' look & feel. But this technology should be used with discretion as java applets are slow running and images make them more time taking to open up. Java should be used as a utilitarian programming language, not as a graphics front-end for your artistic skills. Another depressing thing is that Java has been known to crash certain browsers. So it's better to use Java according to its suitability.
oMETA tags are of immense help to secure the position of your site in search engine database. So be careful while writing the description of your page. Don't mess the description with huge number of keywords but use them in a correct manner to convey the exact meaning. A good and intelligently written description can bring in significant traffic to your site.
oThe ultimate tip for a designer that is used, can bind a user with the site. Try to be friendly to all browsers, all resolutions & all color-depths. You can fetch a better response if your website looks best in the user's browser & resolution.
User is the sole authority of web on which all web businesses are dependent. Your creativity & sensibility can convert a casual surfer to a regular visitor of your web site.
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