Six Simple Steps to the Perfect Web Design

By taking a glance at this quick guide, you will gain the knowledge required to obtain the most effective web page design (see web design packages comparison). By knowing these six top tips, you can ask your prospective designer the appropriate questions and feel confident that you are selecting the right person to create your site.

Flush the Flash Introductions!

Flash introductions can and do generally look beautiful. They are edgy and sophisticated. Sadly, search engines like Yahoo and google cannot see any of it. So, save yourself time and forget the flash introductions.

Are the Pages Web Optimised?

Statistics demonstrate that users will wait only Four seconds to see a page loading when visiting a website for the first time. Any longer than that and they are more likely to hit the back button and then leave. Make sure your web designer is aware of this and thus will balance your website with light weight graphics and text.

Usability and Accessibility

Research shows that users do not read websites, they skim them. A good web designer knows this, so he/she places important information strategically throughout the website, makes good use of conventions (i.e. anything clickable should be underlined) and designs a user-friendly website with intuitive navigation.

Search Engine Optimisation

Besides the issue of search engine visibility (covered above), good web design (see bespoke web design) incorporates competitive and relevant keywords within the text of the page, and tucked away in what's called the HTML Meta Tags. The research and placement of the keywords are extremely important if you want your website to make a positive impact in the search engines!

Tableless CSS Mark-Up

Web designers have traditionally relied heavily on the use of HTML tables to display their web designs on the Internet. However, tables present multiple issues on flexibility, interoperability, and most importantly accessibility. This may explain why table-less CSS mark-up is quickly becoming the common practice in the web community, especially since it separates content from the design of a website whilst having enhanced control and flexibility; it demands less bandwidth usage; and it fully supports mobile and hand held devices. Since HTML table-based coding will sooner or later be phased out, it behoves you to check if your web designer will use the highly recommended table-less CSS mark-up when building your web site.

Compatible Browser

Since the Internet has continued to grow at an exponential rate, so have the Internet Browser brands. While Internet Explorer remains the most popular, followed very closely by Firefox, there are well over a dozen different options out there being utilised. Each of these browsers decodes the HTML, XHTML or CSS of your web site in slightly a different way. Sometimes the design will hardly be affected, yet other times the interpretation given of a particular piece of such code can drastically alter the composition or design of your website. Make sure your website will be compatible in at least the two most common browsers, these are - Internet Explorer and Firefox.

For more information on great web design or to gain a perfectly structured website, have a look at our website for more details.