Now that you have finally decided to start with website design and design your own site, here are a few tips that will surely come in handy. The guidelines mentioned here will make your website design venture a lot smoother and easier as you move ahead with your site design project.
At the very beginning you should be told that starting up website design is something really exciting and you are surely going to enjoy this. But while starting off with the process you have to be patient. Rushing through it may give your site a clumsy look filled with unstructured elements. After all, you do not want your first website design venture to result in an unprofessional portal that does not fulfill your exact purpose.
Here’s a list of the various elements comprising the art of website design:
- Basic design of web pages
- Navigation Options and Rules
- Page sizes
- Text layout along with typefaces and fonts
- Using tables in page layouts
- Images and graphics
Things to keep in mind for your Start up Website Design venture
There are no precise methods of website design and hard fast rules that should be followed. However, if you follow the simple guidelines given here, you may do the website design for your site on your own without hiring any professional firm for the purpose.
- Make little but effective use of filters. Do not impose them on everything you use in the site. Gone are the times of the nineties when most website designers were obsessed with the use of filters and programs offered by Photoshop. Some of these were drop shadows, bevels, glows, lens flares, etc. and were used extensively at that time. In the contemporary age, when you sit down to do your own website design, you should avoid misusing or overusing these filters. Filters are of great benefit for website design but you need to use them in an effective way, avoiding clichéd techniques.
- While planning your site design you must make sure that the site looks usable and customer-friendly. It should not be made to appear cluttered by any chance. The prime purpose is to focus on its usability and ensure that it influences the way a visitor feels on visiting or going through your website. While creating the website design ensure that the text is easy to read, accessible and easy to comprehend. The website design should be done in such a manner that within the first few seconds a visitor gets a good idea of what your site is all about.
- Coming to font size, small fonts really don’t go with contemporary website design ideas. Size 14px seems to be the most suitable for use in the paragraph of the texts. In no case, however, should you use a font below 11 point size. Another important element to be considered in this context is the line height. The spacing between each line of the text paragraphs should be such that it is reader friendly, i.e. conducive to the eyes of the visitors when they read through the content.
- Color Contrast is yet another significant element within the periphery of website design. The themes and colors of a website are very important as they play a very important role in determining the first impression the site makes on the visitors. Very often, inexperienced designers tend to use a lot of colors and end up giving the site a very messy look. What you should try and do is select any two primary colors. These two colors should be used extensively with a third color used occasionally to add variety and contrast to the website. A simple color combination for your website design will appear soothing to the eyes of the viewers and make the site look much better and classy overall. Also see to it that the color theme you choose goes with the theme and purpose of your site for otherwise it may look out of place.
- You should not forget the purpose of the website while trying to make it attractive and impressive. The goals of the site should be kept in mind as paramount when deciding on the overall site design. The design needs to be done in accordance with the basic purpose of the site. For example, if it is an advertising site it should be designed in that fashion; if it is a health and fitness site the website design needs to reflect that fact, and so on. As you go about creating your site design see to it that the overall design seems to be woven around a common purpose.
