Basic principles of website design

You have to consider certain basic principles which are necessary to create an effective web site.  Effective visual design, usability and effectiveness determine the success of a website. There are some basic principles for effective designing of website.

The first and most important principle for designing a successful website is to be clear with your goal and purpose for creating the website. Decide the goal and purpose of your website clearly.

Make sure that the design, content, and nature of your website is based on your goal and purpose of the website. The simplicity or complexity of your website should be also based on this decision. Also consider users’ thought and interaction attitude towards websites and the nature and behavior of the future audience, while designing your website. The website design factors such as site organization, page layout, graphic content, site navigation system, multimedia presentations, interactive forms, etc should be such that they satisfy the purpose of the website.

Give more importance to the content of the website than the design of the website. Only clear and understandable contents are appreciated by viewers. Don’t make users think a lot while reading your website content. Only effective writing attracts customers. The website content must be simple, effective and user-friendly. All the essential elements such as header, body and footer must be included on each webpage. Users appreciate quality and reliability in websites. So it is also important that your content is genuine.

It is better to use short WebPages. In order to keep your WebPages short, subdivide longer topics into logical lumps of information on separate WebPages. Each webpage should include important information.

Your website must be attractive to look at. It should not look plain, boring, cluttered, awesome or distracting. Make sure that your text is clear and legible. Be careful with the size, color, and font of all text used within your website in order to make sure that it can be easily read by the viewers. Also be careful with the background colors. Always use standard text fonts and styles in the WebPages as different browsers may display special non-standard text fonts in various ways.  Also use appropriate browser-safe text and background colors. Black color is always good for the main body of text. Red color is apt for indicating danger or warning. Blue is used to signify hypertext links.

The website navigation system should be easy-to-use. That is, your website must be easily navigable. Each web-page of your website must be clear and easy to follow. Clear arrangement, moderate visual scenes and easily recognizable links can aid users to find the path to their aim. Proper and clear links must be provided to return to the main page, previous page and next page. You can provide menu or table of contents of the Website on each Webpage in order to increase the navigability.

The amount and size of graphics used in your website must be limited to create a better impression of your website. This is because users may lose interest in your website when large graphics can take a more time to download.

Your website must look good on all browsers and monitor screens and settings. Test your website thoroughly. See to that you do not have trouble in finding links and understanding your labels. You have to carefully check the spelling and grammatical errors before posting your contents to the web.