Basic Things to Remember for Web Design

CGR 257

There are certain things you have to always keep in mind when designing an effective website. You always have to focus on certain things you need to remember when you begin building your website design.

1. Getting people to notice your site

When you are designing your site, you want to get people to notice and come to your website. You want it to be unique and new look that draws attention to you. Its no good to have a website online if no one ever looks at it. To draw attention, you can use your interesting design look, your colors, where you advertise your website at, things like that to bring visitors to your website.

2.  Easily maneuvered navigation

Navigation is one of the most important things on your website other than your actual information. The navigation is how people look around your website, and it is how they find the information they are looking for. If someone can't find the navigation or what they are looking for quickly and easily, they won't be impressed with your site, they will complain and most likely not come back to search again. You need your navigation to be somewhere easily seen, very noticeable and easily used. You don't want to make them go in circles, make it very easy to use.

3. Typography

Typography is one thing that is very important in all aspects of design, though it is vastly overlooked by many new designers, it is a very effective tool when used well. The typography on the page is so important because it is the information on the page, it is usually the reason people come to your page. Your body text should be a web safe font that is easily readable, and consistent over the entire page. Header text can be different though, you can choose a different font possibly, or a variation of that font. You never want more than 2 to 3 fonts on a website, you always need consistency.

4. Using pictures and graphics

Using graphics and pictures in your website is a good tool to add color and interest to you site. If you are making a more dignified website that has to be very professional and not extremely colorful, you can use pictures and graphics to add pops of colors and to grab attention on your page. Using these can be dangerous though, because if you use too many, it makes load time way longer than necessary, and can add a lot of weight to whatever part of the page you added a photo or graphic.

5. Making it search engine friendly

Most people will find your website from search engine results from Google, or Bing, therefore having it work well with search engines is very important. Making your headlines short and easily summed makes it easier for search engines to find them, as well as having a good site map can make it easier for your results to show up on a search engine.

6. Keeping your brand going

Branding is one of the most important things to keep in mind when making different forms of advertisements. A brand for your company lets people see your advertisements and know that its part of your company. A brand means you basically keep your color scheme, graphical elements and texture items the same ac cross all your advertisements. For websites, you need to keep your color schemes and logo looking around the same, you want to be able to put all your advertisements together and be like "yeah, they are all obviously for the same company". If you look and think that they are all different advertisements for different company's, then your branding has failed.

7. Friendly between browsers

Everybody uses different browsers, some prefer Safari, others FireFox, and some Internet Explorer, therefore you have to ensure that your websites all fit for every browser. You don't want it to look wonderful in Safari, but when you bring it into Internet Explorer, it looks horrible. You need to ensure that your website is browser friendly for each type of browser.

8. Light airy design

When you are making a website, having too many graphics, text, or other elements can be overwhelming. Websites can be creative and interesting, but you don't want to have too much going on, or it feels crowded and as though the reader cannot possibly see everything on the page at one time. You want to work with your negative space and let that make your website feel light and airy in its design, making the customer not feel overwhelmed by the design or the information.

9. Test often

Always test your website. Go through with each step and ensure that everything is working perfectly. Make sure your links are working, that everything looks perfect when its brought to the web, that it looks the same on different browsers. You have to keep checking your website to ensure that everything is functioning perfectly. This is a very important final step for your website, because it can look great, but if half the features don't work, than its not an effective website.


These are all things that you should keep in mind while designing a website. These are just the most basic things you have to think about, there are so many other things to worry about, but this is just the basic principles of designing and effective website.