How To Design A Web Site

May 1
08:49

2005

Murray Hughes

Murray Hughes

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I'm not a professional web site designer and openly admitthere is a lot that I don't know. But if you're a beginnerI probably know more than you do, so the listen up.

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Rather than give a lengthy dissertation on web design I havebroken it down into the following points:

Keep your navigation bars either at the top or left of thepage (a recent tip I heard is: by putting the nav bar onthe right of the screen it appears below your site contentin the html code and therefore will be read by the SEspiders last). You can clearly see my navigation bar on theleft of every page at http://www.007workfromhome.com

Have your navigation bars visible on every page unless its asales page,How To Design A Web Site Articles in which case you don't want them to goanywhere else.

Divide your navigation bar into related groups of links foreasier navigation.

Have you company name and logo in the top left or top middleof the page.

Keep the theme of your site standard throughout. Don't usedifferent fonts on different pages or mix fonts on the samepage without a good reason for doing so. A constant themealso includes the color of unvisited, active and visitedlinks.

Keep your use of colors to no more than about 5-7 differentcolors per page (less if you can).

Include a site map which lists every page. Good for yourvisitors and site maps make it very easy for search enginesto spider your site.

Don't have more than 3 layers in your web site. That meansif I was to start at your home page I should be able toreach any other page in your site in 2 clicks or less. Anymore and your visitors may become lost and search andengines will leave before they have finished indexing yourentire web site. This is easier than it sounds if you havea comprehensive navigation bar and a site map.

Limit your use of graphics on a page unless they areessential to your marketing because they will drasticallyincrease load time and some visitors won't be prepared towait.

Keep your background white and the majority of your textblack. Mixing background colors and texts not only looksunprofessional it is can also be difficult to read.

Include a links page which can be reached from thenavigation bar. On your "Links" page have instructionsdescribing how someone can post a link and the link youwould like them to posted on their site. I prefer to viewlinks before I post them in case they are not appropriate.

Written by Murray Hugheshttp://www.007WorkFromHome.com

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