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Developing an Effective Website Design

Jan 4, 2013

📄 Contents

␡

I Can't Make a Website That Looks That Good!
Content Before Design
Overall Design
Colors
Fonts
Images
Cascading Style Sheets

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Cascading Style Sheets

The best way to keep your web page’s design consistent is to use a cascading style sheet (CSS). This acts as a guide for your web page to format certain elements in certain ways. If you want all your links to be red and underlined, you can set up an element in the CSS and control the formatting of all the links.

Design Best Practices

There are no hard and fast rules in creating a design for a web page, but there are some best practices to help you avoid common mistakes. Remember to keep your design simple and consistent, and your site will look great.

Content Is King

More than anything let your content guide you in the design of your site. If you are trying to sell helmets for motorcyclists and your website has no pictures of your helmets or people wearing your helmets, no one will come to your site again.

Put What Is New Front and Center

One common mistake of beginning web designers is making new content on their website inaccessible to visitors. Put anything new front and center. Also, tell your visitor that it is new and your site is up to date. This is how your website will create return visitors.

Keep It Simple

Keep your design as simple as possible. You don’t want a visually confusing or complex site that loses or overwhelms your visitors.

Don’t Use Attention Grabbers

Resist the urge to use attention-grabbing design elements, such as neon colors and blinking text. Like Times Square all lit up, attention grabbers can be overwhelming and off-putting to visitors.

Be Consistent

Keep your colors, fonts, and images consistent. For example, if you use certain colors on one page of the site, use the same colors on the other pages. Also, if your organization has an established logo or color scheme, stay consistent with a proven or already-accepted design. You don’t want to confuse your visitors.

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