5 Tips For Good Website Design And Layout

All websites are judged by not just their content but their layout as well. If either one sucks people won't come back, it's as simple as that. This doesn't mean you need the fanciest color scheme and stuff popping out all over the place. Regardless of how you decide to design your website there are some fundamental things you can't overlook if you want it to be visually appealing to your visitors. All that being said here are 5 things to consider when designing your website.

1. Keep it simple

You don't need anything fancy as long as it looks clean and gets the message across. Avoid complex navigational links; keep bulky images to a minimum as these can slow down the load time of your site. Don't clutter your pages with tonnes of widget and flash. Keep it simple, keep it friendly, and make it easy to navigate and make the content be the center of attention and you've already won half the battle.

2. Make the font readable

You want your content to be readable, if it's not why are they going to stay on your site. A good rule of thumb for font size is between 11 or 12 pixels. Make sure to also use an easy to read professional font such as Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif, or Times New Roman to name a couple examples.



3. Use colors that are pleasing to the eye

Regardless if your website is for personal use or a business choosing the right colors makes a big impression with your visitors. It's never a bad idea to ask visitors for feedback to see what works and what doesn't. I also recommend looking at sites that rank very high to see what colors they use.

4. Limit your file size

Your webpage size is determined by the total size of all text, images, and any supporting files such as flash and JavaScript. And while the internet is constantly getting faster you still need to check your sites load time. If your load time is 4 seconds or below you should be okay. Anything above 4 seconds and you risk losing visitors before they even have a chance to explore your site.

5. Web page dimensions

When deciding the dimensions of your site you need to factor in how it's going to look on different monitors with different screen resolutions. Somewhere between 750 to 775 pixels is about the average width of many web pages. As for length remember not to go overboard. If you have a lot of content rather then having one extremely long page break it up into two. Your web page size also effects your sites load time, so keep the pages smaller for faster results.