When it comes to making a website that is effective, organized, and pleasing to look at, it takes a lot of hard work. There are several trends that work for websites while there are trends that are atrocious. What you do is up to you, however, there are consequences to going with decisions that will not be liked by website visitors.So what are some do's and don'ts of great web design?
- Do structure pages well.
- It is important to have good structure to your pages; use grids and proper spacing. Have proper structure and balance of space and content (photos and copy).
- Do not put things anywhere and everywhere.
- Have you seen a website where there is junk placed everywhere? It's gross, right? It's like when someone has junk all over their house, you think, "Do you even organize?" It can be very frustrating to see sites where nothing lines up or line up poorly, there is no organization of the content, it's all very poor craftsmanship.
- Do have a focus.
- Have a certain idea or product that you are building your site around? Great! Having a central focus to your site helps keep it organized and relevant. When you have no focus to your site, that's when you run the risk of having clutter pile up and force visitors to sort through the garbage.
- Do not just post anything on your site.
- Stay away from the irrelevant stuff. Have a site to sell shoes? Don't post stuff about teddy bears. Ward off the ads that are going to be mentioning the latest political gallop poll when your site is about food.
- Do use color schemes.
- Use colors that associate with your brand. The colors that are used in your brand, like your logo, are the colors you use on your website.
- Do not use every color on the color spectrum on your site.
- A colorful site is nice but not when you have the whole rainbow shoved onto a computer screen, okay? Don't make it look like you opened a box of crayons and smeared them on your landing page, it's gross.
- Do K.I.S.S.
- Keep it simple, stupid! Make everything easy to access and navigate (no more than 2 clicks), make it easy to read, make it easy to come back, etc.
- Do not ramble.
- Have a site that rambles and looks like a dump of emojis and incoherent paragraphs, etc? If you do, that is no bueno.
- Do have amazing content.
- Google loves good content on sites; in fact, they just released a new algorithm, Panda 4.0, that focuses on content (among a few other things).
- Do not keyword stuff.
- Google hates when you stuff your webpages with keywords like you do a Thanksgiving turkey with dressing.
If you are looking for a web design firm that can create a site for you (and obey the do's and don'ts of web design), then contact Integraphix. As a Chicago web design firm, we love creating the tool that will help make your business into something great.
