Issues in Web Design - What Makes a Good Design? Articles | Web Design

By: Ajay Prasad

You may be on with your first website or you are redesigning the existing website, which is not functioning well. When you begin a website, your purpose should be very clear. For example-if you are a web design firm, you want to show off your high tech services keeping a particular kind of customers in mind. Keep it as simple and as direct as the functionality and purpose of the site allows you to.

A web designer has very little control on the page display since it depends mainly on the browser. However, making a webpage look similar on various browsers is challenging as well as rewarding. While creating a site, a web designer has to keep certain things in mind such as-

1. Various browsers
2. various versions of browsers
3. Operating system used by the customer
4. screen display area
5. Availability of plugin

One thing you must remember that a website is designed keeping visitors and customers in mind. Good designers look at their website through the eyes of their visitors. For example- if you run a site, which sells a product for elderly, you should make the layout easy, the font size large and design simple.
Optimizing web pages is the most important aspect of web design. An optimized web page loads quickly on the client's system and your web visitor can quickly get the information they had come for.

Your website should reflect what your company is all about. That is why, the color is an important aspect in portraying your company. Blues and greys are considered as good colors for professional websites. The color used in your website should complement your company website's logo.

While thinking of font size on your web page, write only in browser compatible fonts, because what looks good in your browser may not look the same in your customer's browser.
Simple and clean website with little color and lots of white space can be a good site. Graphics should be few. The navigation system should consist of -

1. Left-side menu
2. Site search in the top corner
3. Major categories in the dark color bar
4. Services, shopping in grey blocks
5. Recent releases.

Photos can be effective on business websites. Well-composed photos can add a touch of class to your web pages.

Commercial web sites are built from templates. You should build a template that constructs each part of typical webpage with a hole at the centre for content. You can create page after page from the template. For each page, you have to insert a page title, meta tag content, a headline and text content.