When it comes to web design, there are a couple of ground rules that must be followed to make sure that your site performs well, not only in the search engines, but also when you get visitors to your site.
Here are 5 tips to follow for successful website design:
1. Do not use dark fonts on a dark background. This makes it difficult to read the text. Likewise, do not use fonts that are too small. Small fonts are luckily not the vogue any more!
2. Do not use splash pages. People are looking for information immediately. If they can’t find it immediately, they might just go away and find the information somewhere else. Your home page is also the most important page on your site. If you use a splash page, especially a graphics heavy or flash based splash page, you will prevent the search engines from gathering important information about your site.
3. If you are a professional business or company, do not advertise other people’s products on your site in the form of banner advertising. Even if you are a company that makes money from advertisng revenue on the internet, avoid too many banners and distracting moving objects on your site. It makes your site slow to load and it distracts the attention.
4. Have a good navigation system. Do not hide your menus behind strange and exotic flash images or buttons that are not easily readable. In the case of navigation, simpler is better. Even re-using age old navigation systems such as menu links at the top, or menu links down the side, are better than having a navigation system that no-one can understand or use.
5. Make sure that you do not use audio or video that auto-plays on the site. This is very rude since it imposes on the visitor. What if he is at work or some other place where loud audio is a problem? Rather place this type of behavior under his control by offering a facility for the visitor to choose whether the audio or video plays or not.
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