Four Critical Web Design Rules

When creating a new website or redesigning an existing site, there are four critical rules which the designer should follow to make the site effective and functional - and successful.

1. Easy to Read

When building a website, the first thing you need to be sure of is that your website is easy to read. When you write content, remember that most web site visitors don't read every word of a page - in fact, they only scan pages to find what they want

Break up Your Content...

When creating a new website or redesigning an existing site, there are four critical rules which the designer should follow to make the site effective and functional - and successful.

1. Easy to Read

Break up Your Content

Break up your pages and use headers between major ideas so people scanning your site can find what they want quickly. Use meaningful headers between each paragraph or major idea - this helps with SEO. Headers should be created with the H1 through H4 tags for SEO. Always use good writing structure. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that run on. You should break up any long paragraphs.

Color and Fonts

To help readability, use high contrast colors between font and background. Black text against a white background may seem stark, but it is very readable. To make a website easy on the eyes, try an off-white background and a dark gray (almost black) text color.

Things to avoid with content color:

* Avoid vibrant background colors like purple or yellow. Such back colors make text difficult to read.
* Avoid using an image behind your text.
* Avoid using bright text colors on bright backgrounds.
Fonts Matter

One simple statement covers the font issue:

Simple fonts are the best; the more fancy the font, the harder it is to read.

Standard Compliant Browser for Development

When developing and testing your site, use a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you develop your site to be standards compliant, it will work in most browsers, including MS Internet Explorer (IE). It is recommended that you test your site using the latest and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7). To run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, TredoSoft has a free installer that will install multiple versions of IE. It works great!

2. Simplify Navigation

Using links within your text to other areas on your site. You can create links so that they are good for search engine optimization (SEO). There are generally two ways to create links within your text:

* The wrong way: "For search engine optimization techniques, click here."
* The right way: "Good techniques for search engine optimization are important to use."
Using link text (anchor text) that describes what the link is about is the best way. Search engine web crawlers (programs that automatically index the contents of websites) visit your site, they "read" links. Spiders can index descriptive links into a subject or keyword category. Spiders have nothing to work with when reading a "click here" until it reaches the linked page.

This is Cross Linking - use it as much as possible when it makes sense to do so when writing your content.

3. Consistent Design

At most, one or two layouts should be used in your site design. As a reader browses your site, they should be able to get used to looking in the same place for your navigation.

4. Lower Page Weight is Better

Page weight is the total size of a page on your site in bytes - code, text and images. Your site's page weight makes a big difference to your viewers. Lighter page weight is better for your readers because the page will download faster. The faster a page downloads, the faster they will get to the content.

What is Means to be Light

* No large images. (unless the site's purpose is to showcase images, art or photos)

* Fewer images are better.
* Optimize images for the web at no more than 72 dpi
* Use as small an image dimension as possible for the given design.
* Use a table td bgcolor attribute or a background-color style attribute for solid color backgrounds.
* Make gradients horizontal or vertical (not diagonal) so that you can use a small image "strip" and repeat it.
How "Heavy" Should a Web Page be?

Try putting pages on your web host server as you build your site so you can test it as you go. For pages online, you can test the page weight to be sure you are on track.

Ways to make pages lighter:

* Use linked style sheets
* Use DIVs instead of TABLEs where possible
* Use simple repeating backgrounds for effect
Visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for within about three clicks. Making a site easy to read with consistent page design, and easy to navigate will make it easy to find information. You will be on the way to building a readable

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