Making a site look professional is not that difficult, you merely need to follow several rules. But it is so straightforward to go from a professional looking finish to a childish version that you need to take care at every step.
There are no fabulous secrets to making a web site look professional, you merely need to look at the result and be sure that that you keep on track. Here are my preferred secret hints to follow!
Do not make it too personal! - Unless you are selling yourself as a person, for instance a children’s entertainer, then do not put loads of personality into the site. Too often I hear from my sales team that a customer would like a bit of this in and a bit of that. Yes, they make the sites look very personalised, but too often these take away from the professional look.
Reduce the design team - One of the biggest causes of a site going from a professional look to a amateur look is when too a lot of people are involved in the design. If they all read and obeyed the rest of the ideas, then this would not be a problem. But at every person’s review they each want to put their mark on a web site and suddenly all manner of tweaks and extras are being added. Cramming all of these banners, dancing cows, splashes of colour and more onto the page that every single one of the committee have added soon destroys the look.
Watch the font size - The tiniest reduction of font sizes is sometimes all that is needed to take a web site from looking home built to a professional looking web site. Use relative font sizes (measured in em) rather than actual font sizes and if the visitor needs larger text they could click a button in their browser to increase it. But large font sizes that shout out to the visitor do not look professional. Sadly, quite often that means the default font size (especially in Arial font) does not look good.
Don’t get carried away with colours - It may be clever to add in heaps of blocks of different colours, but it does not look fabulous. Keep to several simple looking colour blocks nicely positioned round the page.
Use professional images - Sorry, but snaps taken on the camera of your mobile mobile might look good, but buying a few images from a top quality stock photography directory (I use iStockPhoto) gives such an outstanding finish to the site that it is well worth the small amount that you pay.
Don’t think movement is a good thing - Ample of movement is never good, not on a web site. One or two small, smooth flash animations can add to the page, such as on the header, but placing a load of clever banners, snowflakes falling down the screen, light bulbs that glow and fade and so on will almost always look tacky.
In short, to make a site look professional try to not be too clever. Merely because you have learnt how to add a scrolling image does not mean you have to. Use clever tricks merely when without doubt needed and do not try to show off with tricks. Your site design will do the showing off for you.
Author Resource:-
Written by Keith Lunt, who offers a web design Merseyside service. For more useful tips about good web design call into the blog.
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