Interactive Design for Games and Web Applications

8 Tips for Designing a Great Website

Creating a web page shouldn’t just to fill all the stuff the need be stuffed in it without a planning. There are some tips for designing good website. These are those tips to design a good website:

 1. Select and stick to a colour scheme

If the company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that’s a good start. For those who starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them – don’t change colours on every page.

The most common colour schemes include:

- Red, yellow and white

- Blue and white

- Red, grey and white

- Blue, orange and white

- Yellow, grey and white.

If it’s not sure what colour scheme to choose, surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can then model your colour scheme on what already exists.

2. Select and Use a suitable templates.

Can’t find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set designs. These come as part of your web design software (such as FrontPage) or we can check out some great websites that specialised in designing templates and also offers some of them for FREE! With lots of tips for designing a website.

www.freewebsitetemplates.com

www.freewebtemplates.com

www.templatemonster.com

www.websitetemplatesonline.com

www.andreasviklund.com/templates/

3. Provide an easy to use navigation system.

This is one of the most important issues to consider when designing a website. We need to ensure your visitors can find what they are looking for easily. Most great looking websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it’s best to stick with it. It also helps to include the navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

4. Don’t go overboard on special effects

Whilst it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up our website, spinning graphics and logos often distract the visitor from the content, not to mention they can take too long to download. The visitors may click away even before the spinning logo finishes loading.

5. Backgrounds

Ensure that the visitors can read the text on the background, ie. No black writing on dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure the links are light.

6. External Links

It is a good idea to open links to other websites (external) in a new window. That way of the visitors can easily return to the site when they are finished browsing the external website link.

7. Site Map & Search Feature

If it is about designing a website that would include more than 15 pages, then it is useful to have a sitemap or a website “Search” feature on your website to ensure the visitors can easily find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

8. Content is King

While it is important that your website looks clean and professional to be a great website, it is far more important that you concentrate your efforts on the creating useful and unique contents backed by whole hearted promotion using ethical means to gain higher search engine ranking and large volume of relevant visitors. If you want to design a professional looking website, the top most things to stay away from should include:

a) Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, animated mail boxes

b) Loads of pop up or pop under boxes

c) Auto play music. Allow customer to play music only if they choose.

d) Hit counters of the free variety, which say “you are 27th visitor”

e) Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly

f) Busy backgrounds.

Don’t sweat the small stuff and get focused on what to include on the website and the best way to promote it.

(2013). Cyberindian: 8 tips for designing a great website. [Online] Available on: http://www.cyberindian.com/web-designing/8-tips-for-great-website.php [Accessed on: 9 October 2015]