Make your website design look good and work great too

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The best websites balance visual appeal and functionality. This means that if you want people to use your site (and enjoy using it); it needs to look nice and have navigation features that even an Internet newbie can use easily.

Remember, you have just seconds to either attract or turn off an average visitor. If you make your site hard to look at and use, you could lose sales and business opportunities for your company.

Different types of businesses can get away with different website design styles, but there are some general points to keep in mind if you want your site to look good and work well.

Avoid the Flashy Intros

Flashy intro or media-rich pages look good, but they tend to download slower. This can be a turnoff for the visitor who simply wants to find information about your business and the products and services you’re promoting. These types of pages are also harder for search engines to index which reduces the chance of your target consumer finding you through search engines.

Keep the Content Fresh

Static websites, the kind that don’t change, work well as online resumes. But if you’re selling products, you can make the site more interesting to look by regularly providing updated, fresh content. This will give visitors another reason to come back to your site, even if it’s just to get the most updated local weather conditions or an interesting quote. Choose your updates carefully keeping your target market and target location in mind. Local weather conditions, for example, won’t work for the business that has clients internationally.

Pay Special Attention to the Text

If you’re putting effort into keeping the content fresh and interesting, you want to make sure your visitors can read it. Avoid text that’s too close in color to the background. The easiest to read text is black on white. Choose size carefully. Too small text is difficult to read, but so is text that’s so big it’s jarring.  Pay attention to font choice and pick one that scale’s well across browsers. The best choices are sans-serif fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Calibri. Keep pages short since no one wants to wait as a page loads and no one wants to scroll through pages of content.

Choose Colors Wisely and Patterns Sparingly

To balance visual appeal and functionality in your web design, it’s important to choose colors that aren’t going to give your visitor a headache. You may think that fluorescent or bright colors and busy backgrounds will make your site stand out, but the truth is that they make it difficult for your visitor to read what you’re trying to tell them. And most visitors won’t stick around to find out what you have to say, no matter how good it may be, if your site causes them eye strain.

Watch the Graphic Size

Size refers to the obvious as in how the graphic looks in relation to the site. But most importantly, it also means the image resolution. Graphics on websites should be low resolution so they upload quicker.