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1. Select a Colour Scheme and Stick to It.
If your company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that's a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them - don't change colours on every page.
2. Use Templates.
Can't find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set designs. These come as part of your web design software (such as FrontPage) or you can chëck out some websites that specialize in designing templates.
3. Provide an Easy to Use Navigation System.
This is one of the most important issues to consider when designing a website. You need to ensure your visitors can find what they are looking for easily. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it's best to stick with it.
4. Don't Go Overboard on Special Effects.
While it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up your website, spinning graphics and logos often distract your visitor from the content, not to mention they can take too long to download. Your visitors may clïck away even before your spinning logo finishes loading.
5. Backgrounds
Ensure your visitors can read the text on the background, ie. no black writing on a dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure your links are light.
6. External Links
It is a good idea to open links to other websites in a new window. That way your visitors can easily return to your site when they are finished browsing the external xlink.
7. Site Map & Search Feature
If your website is more than 15 pages, it is useful to have a site map or a "Search" feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they're looking for.
8. Content is King
While it is important that your website looks clean and professional, it is far more important that you concentrate your efforts on the content and promotion.
If you want a professional website, things to stay away from include:
1. Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, and animated mail boxes.
2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes.
3. Autoplay music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose.
4. Hit counters of the frëe variety, which say "you are the 27th visitor".
5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly.
6. Busy backgrounds.
copyright: By Ivana Katz
www.sitepronews.com
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Kathleen, thanks for posting this. Great tips for beginners and "old pros" as well. http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_wink.gif
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> 1. Select a Colour Scheme and Stick to It.
If your company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that's a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them - don't change colours on every page. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
A real good resource for finding colors that work well together is a place called Color Schemer. They even have a color tutorial.
-Jim
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
7. Site Map & Search Feature
If your website is more than 15 pages, it is useful to have a site map or a "Search" feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they're looking for.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
15 pages?!?!
That's a joke, right?
The real value of a site search is that you get a better handle on what your visitors are looking for my reading the saerch strings they enter in the site search.
Other than that, from a usablity point of view, a site search or site map are often simply a patch for a poor navigation structure.
You want a site, fine, but only add it AFTER you have built the best possible navigation system you can.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> The real value of a site search is that you get a better handle on what your visitors are looking for my reading the saerch strings they enter in the site search.
Other than that, from a usablity point of view, a site search or site map are often simply a patch for a poor navigation structure.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Kenlee,
From what I understand another reason for a site map is to insure that your whole site gets indexed by the search engines.
Some search engines will only go down so many pages from your home page. If your site has pages "deep" in navigation, your site map links directly so the search engine will search it.
I will agree that there is no substitute for good navigation.
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ddub;
As I see it, here is the problem with the site map thing.
Just as a search engine may only go so "deep" into a site, some only index limited KBs on any given page, AND some may follow a limited number of links off any given page.
Google recommends a general limit of 100 links and stops indxing a given page at 101kb, if I recall right.
Combine these 2 things and you end up having to have multiple site map pages to cover the entire site.
From my perspective, you might as well just structure the site from the start to accomodate those issues.
Now, if we were talking about how to get an existing site up to speed without a complete redesign the site map may well be the way to go.
Also remember that if a search engine were to have a "depth" limit, they are probaly talking about a link (click) depth as opposed to a folder (path) depth.
So a path might look like ...
www.example.com/folder1/folder2/folder3/folder4/somepage.htm
that looks like the page is 5 levels down from the home page,
but with a link from the homepage the "depth" would only 1 click.
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http://community.here.com/infopop/em...n_confused.gif
I was with ddub there. Site maps for USER ease, with the added benefit of search engines "catching" all the pages in one's site.
My website links are public; would you mind taking a look at (any) to see if they "help" or "hinder" my SERPS or ratings? (Comments and suggestions ALWAYS welcomed and taken under advisement!)
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The point is that, with well designed navigation, I don't think site maps are needed on any but the biggest sites.
At any rate, most of this stuff is subjective.