2013 Must-Know Tips to Build Professional Web Designs
Web sites are the first level of any user interaction. A good web design must be able to easily convey the message to its users. The various elements of a website must be in sync to provide a likeable user experience. Small businesses can benefit tremendously with carefully crafted websites.
Take a look at these simple yet effective web design tips for 2013:
Stress on Easy Navigation
Websites must have an easy to use and maintain navigation bar. Placement and design of your navigation bar play a major role in keeping the user interested in your site. Categorize the content in the bar into highly usable and logical pattern. Use precise words and avoid using long phrases by limiting navigation item to twelve characters or less. Do not provide more than seven options in the bar as this may confuse your user and force him to abandon your site. Keep call to action on the left side of your website as people are used to reading from left to right. Before building your navigation bar decide its purpose and content. The best practice is to design a tress structured navigation bar with sub - categories. Tree structure will be more informative and will consume less space.
Consistent Layouts
Use clean layouts with the inclusion of more white space. This will divert your user's attention to the central idea of the page while looking very professional and elegant. Use fonts that are legible and do not look cluttered when viewed from a different device. The best way to start doing this is to put your ideas on paper first and then gradually start sketching a theme around it. Explore and experiment with as many typographies as possible. Divide your layout into meaningful sections. Use grids to come up with a balanced and objective web layout. The layout grid will guide you through specific screen requirement and help you build responsive websites.
Adhere to All Screen Resolutions
Encourage users to spend quality time on your website. The one principle that web designs must follow is to be adaptable on the smallest screen resolution. Then align all content and graphics as per that resolution. Measure all tables in percentages before changing them to HTML. The trick to designing for all screen resolutions is to stick to percentages and not pixels. Another vital point to keep in mind is to give a fixed measurement for all your cells except the content cell. You may leave the content cell blank if you please. With time more and more web users will move to higher screen resolutions. Thus it is crucial to design to adhere to all screen resolutions.
Make your Website Cross-Browser Compatible
Before launching, make sure your site is compatible with all popular browsers like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera. Test your website in at least three browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox mainly because these are the widely used browsers. Confirm that your HTML code is validated by W3C as it will help you maintain cross-browser functionality. Choose Dreamweaver as it is the best HTML editor for maintaining cross- browser compatibility. Always bear in mind that no website can be made cross-browser compatible. However, these steps can help your website run well in the most common and widely accepted web browsers.
In Conclusion
To build a reliable web experience, carry out regular usability tests. User communication tests are also extremely beneficial especially in the development stage of the website. Build a dynamic website and invest consistent time in its upgrade and maintenance. After all, you want a scalable website that looks good and can perform well under all situations.
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