Good Design Needed

The right design for your site is the one that's right for you

How do you know what's right for you when there are so many different styles of Web design out there?

There are so many different ways you can design your site that it's easy for someone to get so lost when designing their site that they may give up all together.

You have to remember that the choices are all yours, because it's your site, and you have to decide what you like. Choices like which colors, styles, fonts, graphics and writing styles to use are all very personal choices and not to be made lightly. What you say and do on your Web site says a lot about who you are. Here are some of the basics you need to consider when designing your site.

Navigation
Easy to use navigation is essential to a good Web site

If people can't find what's on your site, well, they just won't stick around, will they?

Ads
Too many advertisements on your site make for a bad user experience. Try for well placed, highly noticeable ads instead.

Maintenance
After creating a Web site you have to maintain it. If you have links to other Web sites you need to check them periodically to make sure the links still take you somewhere because sometimes Web sites disappear.

Things That Blink
Blinking can be annoying and you don't want to annoy your readers.

Noise
A lot of people like to add music to their Web sites. That's all well and good, but if it's a loud song and your reader jumps out of their seat when they open your Web page they will leave very quickly and never return.

Pop-Ups
Not just pop-up ads but also pop-up boxes. You know the ones when you open a Web site and it asks for your name.
Ok, that's kind of cute but if you have 5 in a row asking different questions or you have one on every page on your site, let's face it, that's annoying.

Graphics
Graphics a an important part of a Web site. They add color, attitude, theme. They're necessary, right? Right, as long as you don't over do it. Too many graphics not only make your site upload really slow but it also makes it look like a kid scribbled on your page.

Color
We all know that reading black and white pages is boring. That's why we add color to them. Adding the right colors to your pages makes for great, easy to read pages. You have to make sure that the background colors don't conflict with the text colors. If you use loud colors or colors that conflict, people won't want to read your page and will look elsewhere.

Fonts
You don't have to use the same old boring, standard font for your text if you don't want to. There are many other's that you can use to make your writing look fancier or just better.

Your Style
Everyone has their own writing style. You can be funny, serious or just yourself. How you write your site is up to you and you need to choose the style that's right for your site.

Layout
How do you want your page to look? Do you want all the text to the right and graphics on the left, or visa versa? Do you want an add at the top of the page or do you want all your ads on the side? Having the layout of all your pages look the same looks better to your readers then if you have the layout for every page different. That doesn't mean that you can't make each page different to go along with what you wrote on that page it just means that the basic layout should be at least similar.

Content
What is your site going to be about? What kinds of things are you going to write about? Of course, this is completely up to you. Whenever you write something make sure you spell check it and, if you have time, re-read it to make sure there are not grammatical errors. Here are a few examples of good Web sites for you to look through so you can get some ideas what you would like to do with your site. They each have some unique features that you may want to implement into your site.

source : Linda Roeder