1 - Use plenty of colours
Using a lot of colours is a sure way to get carried away and take the elegant look from the site. Too much is merely that. You just need a handful of colours that compliment each other. Yes, using 30 different colours on alternative blinking backgrounds might make the links stand out, but at what price?
Also, be very attentive of the colour palette you settle on. I was recently requested to use a theme on a site, with part of it red copy on green and the rest green text on red. An remarkable combination, in particular as the web site was for an opticians, who may well be dealing with red-green colourblind customers…
2 - Hide the navigation
Unbelievably, ample of people design sites and miss essentials of the navigation from the screen. I’ve had graphic designers pass me final proofs to work from, that the customer has signed off, that immediately I look at and spot an indispensable part of the navigation is missing.
It does sound impossible, but on shopping sites I have seen designs that are missing simple bit as for instance a link to the shopping basket or checkout. If a customer adds a product and then goes back to view more, but then wants to checkout, they straightforwardly cannot buy from you.
3 - Design for paper
Not having a dig at graphic designers (as some work very well on sites), but there are also stacks that do not get their head about the fact that a piece of paper is totally different to a web site. Several times I have been passed layouts that work on a widescreen, but would require horizontal and vertical scrolling on a normal sized screen. Or the layout calls for a variable screen width, but all of the components are fixed width.
You have to allow for the fact that there are a myriad of browsers, operating systems and screens in use and they will all show your website in a different way.
4 - Just test your website in one browser
Different browsers will display your site in different ways. The formatting between, as for instance, Internet Explorer and Firefox can be slightly different when using certain techniques. A web site that works in one browser does not always look its best in another. It is a difficult and frustrating process, but you have to check your website in different browsers, different operating systems and different screen sizes.
5 - build a web site and sit back
I am always astonished at the number of people that think that building a web site is the lifeline their business needs. Pay a few hundred for a site and then they will be run off their feet fulfilling orders.
This is not the case. Just because you pay for a site, this does not mean that it will be an overnight runaway success. With every new web site you need to market it. That means promoting it to customers and local marketing, promoting it through social media and article writing, pay per click schemes, optimisation and a whole lot more.
Without marketing, your website is as good as non existant.
Author Resource:-
Written by Keith Lunt, who presents a website design Merseyside service. If you desire to know more about website design, call into our marketing blog and watch out for our new free Ebook, coming in a little while!
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