The main goal of most of the  web designers is to produce an extremely attractive, easy to navigate and functional website that will convince website  visitor to stay and do something on the website. Creating  a website requires good graphic design, simple and easy  site navigation, logical website layout and good webcopy. The following items are web design guideline.

Web Content

Website visitor will analyze from your website what type of company you are and how reliable you are. You want your website visitor to see your company  as a reliable source and/or a reputable, reliable  business. Poor grammar and spelling mistakes on the website will immediately reduce your credibility and impression. Your website visitor will start to think that you are running a one man show.  Remember that people use the internet to find information and/or avail services. Whether you are selling your own product brand or reselling someone else’s products, you must first provide your customers with valuable information or they will click away and find a website that gives them what they want. If you are not good in writing text consider looking for a company that does website content writing. Average market rates for website content writing is $99/page.

Cross Browser Compatibility

If you use internet explorer this does not mean that every body else in this whole world will have the same version of internet explorer. There are at least a hundred different browsers in use around the world. Just like search engines you might use Google and other people might prefer yahoo or ninemsn. You must design your own website to work properly in the most widely used browsers. These days it is very easy to design your own website but you might not be able to consider these options. To do that you may not be able to use all of the really great special effects that are available because they may not be supported in most browsers. Keeping it simple you will have more coverage.

Even though most web site browsers are free, people donot bother to upgrade to the latest version which you might have in your new pc. An average surfer does  not know how to upgrade web browser or have the attitude, “If it works, don’t fix it.” Remember your visitor may be using PC, a MAC machine, a Linux platform, a PDA device or a mobile phone and they all use different browsers. Keep in mind cross border compatibility is very important. While designing websites at http://websites-design.com.au we  do keep in mind these important aspects.

A good web design will require your web pages to work in ok in different browsers of which the most popular ones are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari at a minimum. Validating your HTML code will help check your website compatibility but the final test is to view your website in all these important  browsers.

Graphics and Photos

In this fast age no one wants to waste time specially when it comes to impatient Web surfers and studies show that most web surfers will jump to the next website if a webpage takes longer than 8-10 seconds to open. Always remember to reduce the size of the photographs on your website. Optimize your photos and graphic files to have a good small size as possible without sacrificing picture quality.

Using height and the width attributes on the picture is the best thing so the rest of the page can load while the graphic files is being downloaded. Use the ALT HTML tag so those people which have their graphics turned off are able to see what the picture is about.

Background Colors

If you use any other color  behind text, be sure to specify the link color  otherwise the user’s browser  will determine what color the links are which can make them unreadable.

Multimedia

 Multimedia items are referred to as flash movies, video clips, audio clips and background music. Always try using streaming media. Your media will take longer then normal to download and this good force your website visitor to move on to the next available website in his search. Using streaming will  reduce download time. It is important to note that your media must have a start and stop button or in the case of flash intros, skip them if they want. That way people with slow connections or devices that don’t support multimedia can ignore them. At websites design we keep these important aspects in mind while designing your flash intros.

Flash intros information must also be put in plain text as well so people who do not have upgraded browsers are still able to view and read information if they cannot run flash intro. If a plug-in is needed to use the multimedia, always provide a link to it so the user can install it. Finally, remember the 8-10 second rule for site loading when deciding to use multimedia. No matter how great looking website design you have if it does not load faster it will loose visitors.

Site Navigation

While designing a website the first thing that has to be done is to design a website layout and navigation scheme. Site navigation should be simple and intuitive. Studies have proven if a visitor cannot access the required information within three clicks, they will leave the website. This is called as the 3-click rule. Every page of your web site should be reachable within 3 clicks from any [age on the site. If you use anything other than  text links, make sure to test your navigation in all the major browsers. At websites design we not only provide you with the best design but keep in mind of this important aspect.

Links

After time to time you should test all site links to be certain that they are valid. Nothing will make your website  visitor faster than broken link on your website. There are several free online services that will periodically check your links.

Frames

Avoid using frames in your website , since they make it difficult for your website visitors to bookmark individual pages on your website and you want people to bookmark pages so they can come back.

Summary

Good Web design is a combination of  good planning and common sense . Your website should be attractive and extremely easy to use and most importantly should provide the user with the information or services they are looking for.