Best Web Site Design Tips & Tricks

Compress Your Graphic Files

Have you ever visited a site where you’ve had to wait for graphic files to load before you can move through the site. It’s strange how some very large companies in particular seem to think it’s fantastic to have large (file size), flamboyant, flash graphics as the home page of their website. It’s worse still when you have to wait for the file to completely load before you can leave the page.

• Don’t do it. Nothing is more annoying than having to wait for some stupid graphic to load.

Compress all your graphic files so they take up as little bandwidth as possible. Most graphic software will allow you to compress your graphic files. Also, if your graphic is going to be displayed as a 300×200 pixel unit then upload the graphic with those dimensions, don’t upload a larger graphic and expect the browser to resize. This is a big waste of bandwidth.

• Rule: Compress Graphic Files.

• Rule: Use Graphic Files Of The Correct Dimensions.

Provide Compelling Priceless Content

Think content not style. A useless page is still useless no matter how pretty it may look. Good content may even persude your visitors to overlook your mistakes. So provide something with is useful or intresting or preferably both to your visitors.

So write the content, make sure the content is good first and then worry about how it looks on the page. Think about the objective of the your topic, what are you offering your visitor? Was it worth their time to visit your site?

• Rule: Every Page Must Provide Value.

• Rule: Content is King.

Home Page Not Splash Page

Is you website home page a splash page? That’s a page with no real objective other than to provide a welcome screen and a link to enter the site. If so, get rid of it. Make you home page do something useful.

• Rule: No Splash Page.

Organise Your Web Site.

Now this is a hard one, at least I find it hard. Organise your web sites content into simple, easy to find categories before you construct the web site or add new content.

Think about the content you have and what content you may produce and how it should be organized very carefully. If your visitors cannot navigate your site easily and swiftly they will use a search engine and probably go else where.

Note: If you decide to re-organise your website after the event then pages indexed by search engines will, after re-organisation, give 404 errors (page not found). In such cases you can either provide a custom 404 page or use a page redirect.

• Rule: Organise Your Site Structure Carefully.

• Rule: Make Content Easy To Find.

Advertise And Lose Money

What do you do when the advertisements come on the TV? Go make a cup of tea, flip over to another channel? Most of the time we simply don’t like looking at advertisements and yet sometimes there are advertisements which catch our imagination and we remember them for years.

So the trick is getting the right advert in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately if you plan to make money from advertising you are probably displaying too many adverts.

Now admittedly, some sites are nothing but ads, I’m thinking along the lines of voucher sites here. But in general don’t have too many ads, especially unrelated ads. A ratio of 75% editorial to 25% advertising should be about right.

• Rule: Don’t Use Excessive Advertising.

• Rule: Ratios, Advertising 25%, Editorial 75%.

Banner Ads Are OK

You’ve probably heard lots of arguments for and against the use of banner ads but no matter what you’ve heard, they do work, they are good earners if you have a website that makes money from advertising.

But did you know that simple, static banner ads are just as effective as animated banner ads? So don’t feel you have to use too many flashy banners.

• Rule: Don’t Use Too Many Flashing Banner Ads.