Your business website can be a great marketing medium and it can help boost your business. However, to have a successful website, you need to make sure that you follow some tips on website design and layout. These tips are basics of web design and help in making your site a success.
Text must be readable – One of the most important components of any webpage is the text which is visible on it. The colors used for text should be carefully chosen so that any background color does not interfere with the text color. Similarly, the size of the text should either be too small nor too large. Small text is very hard to read and can strain the eyes and larger text will require a lot of scrolling. Text alignment is also an issue which you must consider. Ideally, most websites keep the text aligned to the left instead of having it center aligned or right aligned.
Website navigation should be easy – The main navigation of the website and links within text help the website visitors to navigate around the website to find what they might be looking for. Have a clear navigation on the top, left or right side of the page and use buttons as links where necessary, according to the design of your website.
Also, try and differentiate the links within text on your website pages to make it easy for the user to click on them. You can even give a different color to 'visited' links using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet).
Use a consistent design for all the pages of your website – Consistency and uniformity give a sleek and professional look to a website. Choose specific fonts and styles for the text and headings of your website and use them on all the pages of your site. Similarly, if you have a header at the top of the home page and a navigation bar below it, use the same format for all the inner pages of your website. Link colors, heading and font styles, typefaces and background colors and positioning of headers, footer and navigation should remain same through your website pages.
Avoid using elements which take a long time to download – Flash and javaScript and large images take a lot of time to download. They make the website slow and increase the download time. Try to avoid using heavy elements on your web pages so your site downloads quickly. Websites that take a lot of time to download typically lose their visitors in the first few minutes. So test the download time of your pages and make sure the major of the pages of your website download in less than 15 seconds.
Provide essential information to your users – When visitors visit a website, they may be looking for an 'About Us' page or a 'Contact Us' page. People may even look for FAQs or a UAN or Toll Free number to contact you. Make sure you link to pages like your Contact and About Us page from every page of your website, ideally from the header, footer or navigation of your website which the website visitors can easily find.
