Awesome Hank
The easier it is to navigate around your website, the longer visitors will stay on it, and the longer they stay on it, the higher the likelihood of them doing what you want them to do, such as give their personal details or buy something. Consequently, considering how people will navigate your website is an important aspect of website design. It is something that you should plan at the start of the website design process rather than just making it up as you go along.
Your overall objective in relation to the navigation of your website should be for visitors to it to be able to find the information that they want with as few clicks of the mouse as possible. Put simply, the fewer the number of clicks required by a visitor to find the information that they want, the better your website navigation is. The more times they click without finding the information that they want, the more chance there is that the next click will be the one on the close window icon.
A link is a word, or short phrase, that when clicked takes visitors from one part of your website to another part of your website, and using them effectively as part of your website design is essential. The more pages you have on your website, the more links you will need to include. If your website has 5 pages, then you will probably need around 20 links. If your website has 100+ pages, then you will probably need hundreds of links.
In theory, every page on your website should link to every other page on your website, as that would mean that visitors only need to click the mouse once to find what they are looking for. However, if your website has many pages, then this is impossible, as you would have so many links filling up your pages that there would be hardly any space left for any content. What you should aim for though is to have every page that is highly relevant to another page to include a link to it.
This can be done by including links within the written content on your web pages. For example, if you refer to ‘Sony TVs’ on one of your pages, and another page on your site gives information on Sony TVs, then you should make the phrase ‘Sony TVs’ link to your Sony TVs page. Another approach is to have a list of relevant web pages on your site at the end of each of your web pages. So, if you have written a web page about why Sony TVs are better than Samsung TVs, at the end of that page you could link to your web pages on Sony TV prices and Sony TV models.
In addition to having links within, and at the bottom of, your written content, you should also incorporate menu bars along the top and / or left hand side of your website design. You can include lots of links within a menu bar without them getting in the way of your written content or cluttering up the look of your website.
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This article was written by a website design expert who has more than 10 years experience in the industry. He is currently doing website design in Larchmont, Scarsdale & Bedford and can be contacted at http://kinneymedia.com
Tags: Internet, Web Design, website design, website navigation, websites
Posted in Web Design · March 17th, 2010 · Comments (0)
Of the different considerations involved with website design, text is one of the most significant, yet also one of the most overlooked. You can have the best logo, layout and graphics in the world, but if visitors to your site cannot easily read the information that you are giving them then they will not stay on your website for very long.
The good news is that getting the text part of your website design right is not difficult. All you have to do is follow the guidelines laid out below…
- Only use fonts which are available on all computers, such as arial, helvetica and verdana. Whilst you may not consider these fonts to be the most visually appealing, they are the most practical ones. One reason for this is that they are the easiest fonts to read on a computer screen; in fact, the verdana font was specifically created to be read on computer screens, rather than to be printed out. Also, every computer definitely has these fonts stored on their hard-disk. If you choose a random, fancy font, then many computers will not have it stored, and so you cannot be sure how your website will render on other people’s screens.
- Do not display text in small font sizes; if it looks too small, visitors to your website will click the back button on their web browser straight away. Whilst you may have excellent eyesight, many people do not. Going with a font size of 11 or 12 is recommended for the main body of your website content, with sub-titles and headings being a font size or two larger. Be consistent too, by ensuring that you use the same font sizes for your content, sub-titles and headings throughout every page of your website.
- Limit the width of your paragraphs to about 15 words per line. This is necessary so that people only have to move their eyes to read your content, and not their whole head. This number is based on research and studies that have been carried out which show that 15 words is as far most people’s field of vision will stretch. Not every line has to be precisely 15 words, as some sentences will a greater or lesser amount of small words such as ‘to’, ‘and’, ‘a’, etc., so you just need to use 15 words per line as a rough average.
- The color(s) you use for your text should sharply contrast to the color(s) you use for your background. Black text on a white background is easiest for people to read, but it is not necessary to limit yourself to that if it does not suit the overall style and color scheme of your website design. If the background color is light, then make your text black or a dark shade of gray, and if the background color is dark, then use white as the color for your text. Using non black, dark gray or white text very rarely works, so be extremely careful if you are intent on using a different color for your text.
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This article was written by a website design expert who has more than 10 years experience in the industry. He is currently doing website design in Chappaqua, Westchester and White Plains and can be contacted at http://kinneymedia.com
Tags: Internet, Web Design, website design, websites
Posted in Web Design · March 14th, 2010 · Comments (0)