Clean Website Design

Design is a crucial aspect of developing your site. Not only do you want to develop your site using search engine optimization best practices so that you can achieve great rankings and increase your online presence, but you also want to structure your site and navigation in such a way that is intuitive to your users and will make it easy for them to find what they need on your site. Confusing sites won't convert, and if information is hard to find, users are not likely to bookmark you as a resource or favorite.

 

by : Neil MacLeod

Taste comes in many forms . What may seem poor website design to one, may be good website design to another. Website design is an expensive and extensive part of any website build. Going to and fro between the client and the designer is a costly business, but it doesn't need to be. Commonly most clients are currently looking for clean web design.

The search engine experts will tell you that the best web sites provide the content to the search engines of the top of the page followed by links and other content . This normally means that the best position for a menu is on the right hand side. However by using CSS (cascading style sheets) it is possible to block the content so that you can position the content blocks for search engines at the beginning of the code for the page and show it in the middle or to the right as you wish. So with this in mind we will look at the most suitable choice of design for your website

The majority of web sites come in three different formats. They are one column, two column or three column web sites. The choice of each should be dictated by the amount of information which needs to be shown .

Then there's the size of the displayable web page. We have to take into account monitor size. Four years ago 35% of monitors were 15" monitors allowing of viewable width of 800pixels which everyone designed for. Actually 760px so that a horizontal scroll bar were not appear underneath. Times change and now we have to consider widescreen monitors and legacy monitors. Again the decision needs to be made dependent on what information is to be displayed. If there's not much information to show then a single column fixed width 760pixel page would suffice . if a lot of information is on the page a three columns system which fits to the size of the screen would be ideal.

 

 

Obviously you want good quality, visually appealing graphics that represent your unique business model or web presence, and that create a brand awareness. However, you don't want to sacrifice content to non-functional visual elements. Let your graphics complement your content and overall site, but don't loose the important things, i.e., calls to action, important information, etc., for the sake of aesthetic appeal. We all know that, at the end of the day, your site needs content to rank. Why? Because Google reads text...period. You can have a beautiful site graphically, but if there is nothing else there, it may as well be invisible because Google won't see it.

 

When deciding how to layout your home page content, you want to think about the print media term "above the fold". When people pick up a newspaper, the lead story, headline and photo are set "above the fold" to be the first infomation that the reader sees. You want to employ this same content with your site content. What is the most important information you need to convey? What is your most important call to action? You need to think about these things during initial graphic design as well. For instance, if you want a large graphic banner at the top of your site, although someone with a large monitor will be able to see your banner and your "above the fold" content, someone with a smaller screen may miss your important content because of the size of your graphic.

When we have decided which type of layout to use we can then elaborate on the style of the header. The header should not be to large in height as this pushes the relevant information down the page . There is an expression called "above the fold" and this is what you can actually see on the screen when you open up a web page. You want your user to see your relevant content so be in mind of the height of your header. The heading is where the initial focus of the site is found, so combining good imagery with a strong company logo you should be on to and a winner.

Now comes the detail. We have initially decided on a clean layout, so very large block like images are out. The images should be relevant to the website content and should guide the user to read or in the case of shopping carts guide the user to click on a product. Borders on the images are often nice And simple single line borders can keep images looking uniform unless of course a white background brings out the best in that image.

With detail in mind menu buttons which are mostly text but have a nice design to stand out increase the affordance that they are menu buttons. Content separators can be a stylish a way to separate text. Text headings can be made a little more elaborate to focus on what the content is about. Small touches like read more buttons, go back buttons and search buttons, really do add to the clean effect of the web site if they complement the overall colour scheme, not too dramatically but sensibly.

In summary any clean design can be an affordable design, but the layout should reflect the intended content. Do not forget those small styling touches as they really can add to the overall affect of any websites design.

Don't let your design overrun your content. A lot of people spend way to much money on websites to get the "creative development" and end up with a site that, while visually equisite, is useless because the content is lost and the site is not search engine friendly or, in the worst cases, is invisible to search engines. Design and structure need to work hand in hand. Everything aspect of your site needs to support your overall purpose and business goals.

 

Bottom line: Make your graphic element complementary to your site - not the primary aspects - and use a design that is logical, intuitive and that effectively presents your content. Find a developer that understands both graphic design principles as well as search engine optimization and Internet marketing best practices. Providers that have this synergy will provide you with the best solutions on the front end, and will save you from having to go back and do a lot of fixing later on.

About The Author
Neil MacLeod runs http://www.web-studio.co.uk/ providing web site and web marketing services in Buckinghamshire. Neil has been building websites since 1999 and is a founding member of http://www.itwebnetwork.co.uk.

 

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