Tips for Designing the Perfect Website for Your Business
Your business website is the place where the whole world has a chance to view you, as well as your products. Because of this, it is important to present the best image possible of both. Practicing great design principles from the very beginning will help to ensure that your website reaches the maximum amount of visitors and sell as many of your products as possible.
Navigation
One of the most important parts of good web design is making sure that your navigation buttons on your website are very clear. If people cannot figure out how to find what they want on your site, then you are going to lose them from the very first page, and this can be bad for sales. So, make sure your navigation system is clear, concise, and above all simple.
Images
Keep images on your website to a minimum. Sites that are filled with lots of images take longer to load, and some customers will just opt to go elsewhere if your site is taking forever to load.
Text
Keep your language short and to the point, and your paragraphs small. If you think a paragraph is too long, then break it up into smaller bits of information and additional paragraphs. Visitors are going to want to be able to scan your website and know what it is all about in a matter of minutes, not read ten paragraphs about your business and products.
Web 2.0 Compliant
Be sure that your site is compliant with Web 2.0 standards. Also, make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your company website looks great in Internet Explorer but lousy in Mozilla Firefox, then you are going to lose a huge group of buyers very quickly, not to mention just prospective visitors.
Scripting Languages
Stay away from scripting languages; they might seem like they add lots of nice bells and whistles, but in the long run all they do is clog up your website and make your visitors wait longer while your site loads. In some cases, scripting languages will even crash browsers, which you don’t want, so it is best to avoid these altogether.
CSS
Finally use CSS to style the content of your pages. CSS will save you a ton of work by making it to where you only have to add the content, and the CSS page will add the formatting to each page. While it is a little difficult to learn, if you can learn to modify existing free CSS templates, you can come up with some very nice websites.
Designing your site using these rules will ensure that you have a website that loads quickly, looks professional, and will bring visitors back, again and again, both to read and to buy your products.