What separates a great website from a good website? What imagery is good and what is counterproductive? Does the site have good hierarchy and well thought out copy? Is the site optimized for the search engines? By following basic web design principles a website can be attractive, functional, and get noticed by the search engines.
Websites are difficult to separate the good from the bad at times. A website may be visually beautiful and fail miserably in the search engines. Another may have great structure but leaves the visitor wondering why someone didn’t take more time to beautify their environment. All have seen these two examples at work and there is a happy medium to reach for.
- Define a site thoroughly before building it
- Know a sites keywords and distribute them throughout
- Follow known successful design layouts
- Use non Java script menus always
- Keep Flash to a minimum
- Use high quality optimized images with alt text
- Build every site with a easy to understand hierarchy
- Use W3C web standards construction methods
- Take the time to produce good grammatical copy
By following the above guidelines, errors will be virtually eliminated as well as functions that refuse to operate in certain browsers. A wealth of resources exists on the Internet for excellent tutorials, images, icons, and code for every aspect of web design. Plan thoroughly, execute faithfully, and the web design produced will be worthwhile.