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Home » Articles & Tips » Web Design & Development
Rules and preference for designing a website
can differ from website to website depending on the target audience,
whether it is entertainment website or corporate website or just
a personal portfolio. But there are still somethings that are
common in all websites, and if followed can make your site look
better. So here are few things I would like to discuss.
1. Font Style
and Size
Selecting a right font and size is essential.
For example fonts such as Verdana, Arial and Helvetica look especially
good in websites, whereas fonts such as Times New Roman, Courier,
Sans-Serif... etc types won't look good. Also the size of the
font plays important role in website design, smaller sized fonts
look neat but it is more difficult to read. So it is your decision
to make a choice between the look and usability. Following is
the comparison between Times New Roman and Verdana.
| This
sentence is in Times New Roman with size 3 |
This
sentence is in Verdana with size 3 |
| This
sentence is in Times New Roman with size 2 |
This
sentence is in Verdana with size 2 (Good Choice) |
| This
sentence is in Times New Roman with size 1 |
This
sentence is in Verdana with size 1 |
2. Using tables?
Don't forget the cellpadding
Almost all the websites use tables in one
way or another, but using tables with a sense of design will make
your site look better. If you use tables background colors in
your page, then it is very important to use cellpadding, otherwise
all the text inside the table will stick to the border of the
table. Which is not recommended at all. Here is the Examples:
| This table has a cellpadding
of 10. This table has a cellpadding of 10. This table has
a cellpadding of 10. This table has a cellpadding of 10. This
table has a cellpadding of 10. This table has a cellpadding
of 10. |
| This table has a cellpadding
of 0. This table has a cellpadding of 0. This table has a
cellpadding of 0. This table has a cellpadding of 0. This
table has a cellpadding of 0. This table has a cellpadding
of 0. |
3. Avoid intros and Welcome pages
Unless you have a very impressive intro (maybe designed by 2advanced) avoid using intros. As for the welcome pages that has an "enter" button and some info about the site should be avoided as well. Basically with welcome page you are stopping your users from actually seeing your site, you are keeping them one step behind. You never know maybe some of your users leave your site without even clicking on your 'enter' button, if so then you are loosing a potential customers.
4. Pop up
window? Bad idea
Pop up windows are a good to catch
user's attention and force him to take action (at least to make him close
the window), but it is annoying and generally users don't like it. So unless it
is very essential to use a pop up window for you - I would say
avoid using it. Eventhough you can program it to pop up only once,
it is still considered a bad idea.
Especially now with the browser's build in pop-up blockers, most of the popups are left blocked.
5. Mention
Image height and width in html
When browser opens a particular page it
tries to understand the html, so when you leave the image without
mentioning its dimensions, browser gets confused how much space
it supposed to take, thus it will slow down the loading of the
page. However if you mention the width and height of the image,
browser can know exactly how much space should it allocate for
particular image, and even before the image loads it can allocate
this space to it and continue loading the rest of the page. So
if you want your pages to load faster, don't forget to include
image width and height.
6. Follow the web conventions.
Web conventions are very useful when it comes to web design, if you follow them you will make your user's life a lot easier. After all only useful things will become a convention. For example having the logo on the top-left corner of your website and linking it to the homepage is one of the conventions. Or employing consistent navigation throughout your website is another convention. So don't break the conventions by having a different navigation system for every page or section of your website. Or do not link your logo to contact us page. These are just the examples I am sure you will not do that.
7. Avoid under construction pages.
Publish your websites only if it is fully completed, or if you have unfinished pages then do not put those pages online yet and do not provide link to them until they are fully completed. Under construction pages are totally useless, it will waste your user's click and might even generate negative effect towards your website (or you). Because if you think from user's perspective you don't want to click on the link just to find out that this page is under construction.
8. Avoid underlined texts that are not links.
Only thing that should be underlined are links, however if you underline a text then make sure that the users will not confuse it for a link.
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