Tips and Tricks for Good Website Design

Hello again, by this time you have probably read my previous blog titled, "How to Create a Website." Today, I thought it would be fun to get into the good stuff, which is designing the layout of your website. To start things off, I have a few tips and tricks for good website design. Tip #1, you don't need to be an art major to create a good website. When I first began thinking of designing a website, I thought it would be extremely difficult because I'm no art major. However, websites are not meant to be artistic and expressive. Websites are geared towards purpose and meaning. If a customer were to access your site and find scattered links with cool photos floating around, they would be confused and leave the site. Customers typically have a purpose when they go to a site, and the sooner they can fulfill that purpose the more likely they will come back. Trick #1, use real and legitimate numbers to create validity for your website. One thing I love to see on a website is numbers. Numbers that tell a customer how many people a company has served, how many jobs they have completed, or how long a company has been in business. This helps develop trust for potential customers. It's easier to trust a company that has served 154 customers then a company that claims to have served over a hundred. Tip and trick #2, less is more. Have you ever been to a website that has a ton of navigation links at the top of the page? Or a website that has a ton of pages that seem impossible to navigate through? This is probably the most frustrating part about a website. When you are trying to decide on the number of pages and navigation links you should consider this question, "Do I really need it?" Trying to condense your information to the bare minimum is really useful for potential customers. No one likes to read more than they have to. Keeping it to the essential information is better. This same principle goes for the navigation links. You don't need one for every product or service you have, instead you could generalize the link and then have it drop down to more options. This just helps to keep the confusion down to a minimum for customers. A good rule of thumb is no more than 7 navigation links. So there you have it, a few good tips and tricks for good website design.