Taste comes in many forms . What may seem poor website design
to one, may be good website design to another. Website design
is an expensive and extensive part of any website build Going
two and Going to and fro between the client and the designer
is a costly business, but it doesn't need to be. Commonly most
clients are currently looking for clean web design.
The search engine experts will tell you that the best web sites
provide the content to the search engines of the top of the page
followed by links and other content . This normally means that
the best position for a menu is on the right hand side. However
by using CSS (cascading style sheets) it is possible to block
the content so that you can position the content blocks for
search engines at the beginning of the code for the page and
show it in the middle or to the right as you wish. So with
this in mind we will look at the most suitable choice of
design for your website
The majority of web sites come in three different formats.
They are one column, two column or three column web sites.
The choice of each should be dictated by the amount of
information which needs to be shown.
Then there's the size of the displayable web page. We have
to take into account monitor size. Four years ago 35% of
monitors were 15" monitors allowing of viewable width of
800pixels which everyone designed for. Actually 760px so
that a horizontal scroll bar were not appear underneath.
Times change and now we have to consider widescreen
monitors and legacy monitors. Again the decision needs to
be made dependent on what information is to be displayed.
If there's not much information to show then a single
column fixed width 760pixel page would suffice . if a lot
of information is on the page a three columns system which
fits to the size of the screen would be ideal.
When we have decided which type of layout to use we can
then elaborate on the style of the header. The header
should not be to large in height as this pushes the
relevant information down the page . There is an
expression called "above the fold" and this is what you
can actually see on the screen when you open up a web
page. You want your user to see your relevant content
so be in mind of the height of your header. The heading
is where the initial focus of the site is found, so
combining good imagery with a strong company logo you
should be on to and a winner.
Now comes the detail. We have initially decided on a clean
layout, so very large block like images are out. The images
should be relevant to the website content and should guide
the user to read or in the case of shopping carts guide the
user to click on a product. Borders on the images are often
nice And simple single line borders can keep images looking
uniform unless of course a white background brings out the
best in that image.
With detail in mind menu buttons which are mostly text but
have a nice design to stand out increase the affordance that
they are menu buttons. Content separators can be a stylish a
way to separate text. Text headings can be made a little more
elaborate to focus on what the content is about. Small touches
like read more buttons, go back buttons and search buttons,
really do add to the clean effect of the web site if they
complement the overall colour scheme, not too dramatically
but sensibly.
In summary any clean design can be an affordable design,
but the layout should reflect the intended content. Do not
forget those small styling touches as they really can add to
the overall affect of any websites design.
