Designing A Website

A website built to disseminate information should be simple and straightforward. On the other hand, if it is a commercial website, it should contains, pictures, graphics, videos and other audio-visual elements.

Color scheme

Unless your site is about, say, some glitzy subject like movies or videos, its color scheme should be simple and pleasing to the eyes. The colors of the text and background should make for an easy reading. You should stick to your chosen color combination throughout the website. Do not change the colors with every page. Some of the important color combinations are blue and white; red, yellow and white; white, blue and orange.

If you are not sure which colors you should choose, surf the internet and find sites that are similar to your subject and check what color patterns they have used.

Keep the navigation simple and predictable

Whatever the nature of the website, it should enable the visitor to move around through its pages quite easily. The text in the navigation links should be indicative of the topic or the page to which it directs the visitor. Navigation links are provided on the left side of the page. It has become a kind of norm since the visitors are used to looking for navigation links on the left side.

Navigation links should also be placed at the bottom of each page so that the visitors do not have to scroll back to the top.

Templates

Templates are basic website designs. They can be taken from your web design software such as Front Page. They can also be downloaded from several websites that specialize in website template designing.

Site map

It is always advisable to include a site map if your website consists of 15 pages or more to enable the visitors to find easily what they are looking for.

External links

Links to other websites should open in new windows so that the visitors do not leave your websites and come back to it after browsing through the linked site.

Content

Content is the king. All glitz and glamour are useless if the content is not unique, informative and useful. Content should provide the information that the visitors are looking for.