The Key to Effective Web Site DesignWritten by Breal Web Hosting
This article may be published electronically or in print, free of charge, without alteration to any content and resource box at end of article is included in it's entirety without alteration. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE WEB SITE DESIGN by Breal Web Design ************************************************************ The key to effective web site design is good planning. Without planning and organisation, you will end up with chaos. Once you have a design plan, content is next consideration. This applies equally to new and existing web sites. To create your plan for a new or existing site, sit down and consider what your site will achieve. Get out a piece of paper and a pen, draw a circle in middle and mark it 'home'. Draw boxes connected by lines radiating out from centre circle and mark them with each of main areas your site will cover. Don't forget a site map if your site has more than 8 or 9 pages. Repeat this process for each secondary circle until you've planned your site. If you've already got a site, do this exercise and include every page on web site. Good navigation is vital and poor navigation leads to visitor frustration. Once you've created your plan, you can create logical navigational links. Make up to 8 main navigational links to use on all pages of your site. You don't want to confuse your site visitors with too many options. You can offer more choices later, as your customers drill down into your site. If you have lots of links, then consider creating pages that list each group of links instead. For example, Click Art Gallery, (www.clickart-gallery.com) has hundreds of pages within site, but only 8 main links. Two of main links are to sub navigation pages. The first is an 'arts' page. This lists all pages on site only relating to displayed artworks. The second is a 'services' page that lists all extra services on site. Once your navigation is taken care of, it's time to focus on content. Common questions we hear are, how much information should I put on a page and how big is a web page?
| | Web Design Mistakes - Text and FontsWritten by Breal Web Design
This article may be published electronically or in print, free of charge, without alteration to any content and resource box at end of article is included in it's entirety without alteration. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.Web Design Mistakes - Text and Fonts by Breal Web Design *********************************************************** The main purpose people use Internet is for research, according to most user surveys. While not specifying kind of research being done, it is safe to assume that people are spending a lot of time online reading. Unless a site is meant to be full of graphics, such as an art gallery or promotional page for a graphic designer, use of graphics should be minimal. To learn more about using graphics, send a blank e-mail to mailto:wdm-graphics@brealweb.com Your site should be easy to read. There are literally thousands of fonts out there, so why shouldn't you use a special one? Because not everyone looking at your web site will have font installed on their computer. Your visitor will be looking at your page with their installed fonts. Mac users have different default fonts to IBM and compatible users too. So how do you cater to masses? There are a few fonts that are installed by default on most computers and it's best to stick with them (for example: Times New Roman, Arial, Courier or Verdana). When using these fonts you can specify them in your font tags or in your CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) files. Always include alternatives for different browsers to choose from. Using a font tag for example: your text or <"FONT-FACE="Times New Roman, Times, serif">your text The worst text and font mistakes include: ø Making your text too small to read easily. If you are using a style to specify a font size, ensure your font is not under 10 points. The exception to this is 'fine print' such as a link to your privacy policy or other documentation you are legally required to display. ø L-o-n-g copy. You don't get your visitor's attention for long. Many readers will stop at 2 or 3 web pages (around 1000 words) or they'll start to skim your document and could easily miss important information. If you have miles of text one on page, you could consider splitting it up into sub pages. Try creating a summarised main version and use descriptive links to more pages.
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