Many people want to design their own websites, whether for personal or small business uses. Many owners of small businesses can’t spare more money for web design and development project. If they do need to work on an interim design before they could get professional helps, it is important for them to consider a number of factors. In general, we should make sure that our design is clutter-free and simple. We should be able to get a few cool effects with Fireworks and Photoshop. However, we should know that many design styles are already outdated, so it is important for us to determine whether the design that we choose is still relevant. In this situation, we should check our competitors to know whether our design is acceptable.
It is also a good idea for us to communicate visually and we should use proper visual elements to really grab eyeballs. This should allow us to communicate well with our users. Colors can be used to effectively project our website’s core messages into real visual elements. Pink can be used to represent girls’ apparel and green for gardening supplies.
If possible, we should use proper visual elements for highlighting. As an example, buttons can be used to highlight specific links. The overall navigation can be much easier to notice and we should make sure that we don’t use buttons with outdated designs. Users will also be directed to important content using proper visual cues. Our web design should also be kept content-rich and we need to provide focus on more interesting content that could urge people to come back in the future. We should know that people want to get fresh content when they come back, so we shouldn’t disappoint them. People don’t have the patience to read a huge wall of text, so it is important to properly arrange our content. It means that we should keep the text and its layout narrow. It is a bad thing if users need to scroll sideways frequently as they read from side to side. After reading a paragraph, they will get bored. It is also the reason why newspapers have short columns, specifically to prevent users from moving their eyeballs too far.
It is important for us to be consistent when doing anything related to web development and design. Without adding common sense, people could get overwhelmed when they visit our website. Fonts should be easily readable and people should be able to read without minimal or even no effort. People want to know the content only by scanning it and they will read it when finding something interesting. This is also an important factor when we want to make people our regular visitors. We should be able to gratify their needs, preferably instantly. So, we should try to provide immediate access.
We shouldn’t test user patience by using poor navigation design. We should provide fresh content on our topic, especially related to the one that is interesting to them.