The
Birth of a Professional Web Site Part Three Basic Web Design
Guidelines
The appearance of your web site is one of the most important
aspects of your success. Your product or service will literally
be judged by the appearance of your web site.
Poor web design is one of the leading causes of small business
failure. There are literally thousands of home-based Internet
businesses struggling to make a living online. Most, make
very little or no money and end up closing their site in defeat.
I have received many messages over the years from struggling
Internet marketers wanting to know if I could look at their
site and tell them what they're doing wrong. Most of the time,
I can tell them the problem as soon as their site has loaded
-- poor web design. They failed to take the time to learn
how to properly design their sites -- how to design a professional
looking site specifically designed to sell their products
and services.
If you really want to succeed, you must take the required
time to educate yourself.
Creating a Template
When you begin designing your web site, your goal should be
to create a template that you can use to create each page
of your web site. This will give your entire site the same
look
and feel.
A template is simply a web page "shell" that contains your
entire page design, logo, images, navigational links and a
specific area for your content. However, your template won't
contain any content, as each time you create a page with your
template, you'll save it with a different page name.
Formatting Your Pages
I highly recommend placing your entire page content within
HTML tables. Tables will enable you to have complete control
over your content and how it will be displayed.
For example, you can create three tables, stacked on top of
each other, for each section of content. The cellpadding,
cellspacing and border attributes should be set to "0" to
enable your tables to seamlessly flow together. In addition,
the widths for each table should be the same. The top table
would contain your page header content, the middle table would
contain your content and the bottom table would contain your
footer content.
As placing your entire page content within a single table
will significantly increase your site's load time, stacking
your tables will enable you to benefit from the powerful formatting
capabilities of tables, while at the same time, keep your
site's load time down.
If you've ever designed a web page without using tables, you
know how limited you are as to how your content will be displayed.
Your text will be displayed right up against the left border
and will span across the entire width of your page -- certainly
not a good way to design a professional looking web site.
Tables will enable you to display your content in sections
like a newspaper, set up a specific number of rows and columns,
and even place additional tables within your main content
table to create special content sections with colored backgrounds.
Your Storefront
Your main page is the storefront for your business and should
specifically let your visitors know exactly what you're offering.
If your potential customer can't find your product or service,
they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it.
They'll go on to the next site and probably never return.
They're visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want
something your site offers. Provide them with what they're
looking for and you'll reap
the benefits.
Branding will play a major role in your success. Make sure
you place your company logo and slogan in the top left corner
of each page. This will not only assist your visitors in remembering
your site, but it will also give your pages the same look
and feel.
Instead of trying to cram all your content into your main
page, consider creating sections. These sections can contain
highlights of your information with a link to further information.
You can set your sections up in tables with colored heading
sections for information such as articles, products or whatever
you'd like.
It's much better to keep your main page down to the most essential
elements and link to the detailed informational pages.
A good rule of thumb is "less is more." In other words, keep
your main page as small as possible and include your most
important elements.
Navigation
When you begin designing your pages, keep in mind, your visitors
may enter your site from pages other than your main. Make
sure you include good navigational links on every page. Place
your navigational links together at the top, bottom, left
or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your
links and maintain a nicely organized and uniform appearance
throughout.
Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your
main page to any other page on your site down to three or
four.
Fonts
One of the most important parts of a web page is text. The
way in which you display the text on your web page will have
a great impact on your success. It can make your page look
very professional or very unprofessional.
When placing text within your web page, always be consistent
with your fonts. In other words, don't use different fonts
throughout your pages. The standard fonts used on the Internet
are Arial and Verdana. The standard text size is 2. Arial
and Verdana are the standard simply because they are the easiest
to read on a computer screen.
Headlines, which require a larger font size, are a bit different.
A popular headline font used is Georgia, as it displays nicely
in the slightly larger font size.
Background and Text Colors
Use caution when selecting your background and text colors.
Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the
attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent
with your background theme on each page of your site.
Select your colors very carefully, as colors affect your mood
and will have an affect on your visitors as well.
Bright colors, such as yellow and orange, cause you to become
more cheerful or happy. Colors such as blue and purple have
a calming effect. Dark colors, such as brown and black, have
a depressing effect.
A good rule of thumb is to use colors based on the type of
effect you're trying to achieve. However, it's always best
for your text areas to have a white background with black
text.
Above all else, you must take the time to educate yourself
before you begin. I can't stress this point enough. If you
don't, you're honestly just wasting your time. Although it
may take a little longer, it will be well worth it in the
long run.
(Continued in part four)
Copyright © Shelley Lowery
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