oswebdesign.co.uk Blog

Ingredients for Successful Web Design

Good design and layout is crucial to your website’s success. Here, OS WebDesign gives you some key design rules:

1. Have a clean and simple layout

The layout is how your web page is arranged. Pages should be easy to read and uncluttered. They should each contain a handful of paragraphs and a small amount of design and/or imagery, together with your business logo and contact details. Your website should also fit within a standard browser window.

2. Opt for easy navigation

The navigation buttons or links of a website are usually placed in one of three areas: across the top of a page or down the left or right hand side. Regardless of where you choose to put them, try to keep the text on the buttons or in the links brief. Anything longer than one or two words will cause this part of your layout to be too wide and crowd your content area. You can usually fit up to eight buttons (may be less depending on how much text is used) across the top of web pages. Some layouts with top page primary page buttons will display sub page links in a second row across the top or down the left hand side of the page. Navigation buttons down either side of the page do not run into any limitations due to the endless amount of vertical space. Remember though, the amount of text on the buttons will greatly affect the amount of space for content.

3. Use soft, neutral background colours to keep the focus on the content

Choose your colours carefully. Keep in mind that your tastes may not be appealing to your target audience! Think about the ‘white space’ on your site. In general, white space is the cornerstone of good website design. Keep the background areas where your information or products will be displayed white or another light/pale colour. Dark or oddly coloured backgrounds distract visitors from your information and can make it difficult to read. Background images are a big no-no for the same reasons and can make pages load more slowly. Coloured text should be used sparingly. Contrast is key or it can be very difficult to read.

4. Make sure your website looks good in different browsers

Web designers have no control over which browser someone will use to look at your website. Browsers are software programs – such as Mozilla, Firefox, Safari and Opera -- that enable you to view WWW documents. There are a range of external factors that effect how a web page will look to the user. These include:

• The user's computer system
• The preferences the user has set up
• How the browser decides to interpret the page
• Whether the browser supports the code used on the page
• Bugs in the web browser