Some basics on web design

So you've got the readers to visit your website. Now you want to make their experience an enjoyable one. How can this be achieved?

First of all, you need to think about the design of your website.

Some basic rules for good webdesign:

1) Don't have all the banners, links etc. on your front page. It will look too cluttered and people might be tempted to click on that interesting banner to somehwere else, and you've lost a potential reader. Have a separate links page.

2) Have text that is easy to read on your background. Pale colours with darker text are easier to read than dark background and pale text.
Experiment, if that groovy purple background and lime green text gives you a headache, imagine what it'll do to the rest of your readers!

3) Learn some basic html, if your page is created with html, it will look how you want it to look in everyone's browser.

4) Don't have fancy things just because you can. Javascript, activex are all well and good, but not everybody has them and your page won't work properly on browsers which don't have them.

5) If you use pictures and animations, check the sizes. That pretty picture that you just had to have may take a long time to load and people will get bored and surf somewhere else.

6) Less is more in webdesign. Don't use 20 different fonts or colours, when 5 will be enough.

7) My pet peeve, the front page of your website says "enter here". Why? Why have a page that serves no function? Don't do this, it's very frustrating.

8) Remember the 3 click rule. Your visitors shouldn't have to click more than 3 times to get the information they want.

9) www.grsites.com has lots of free clipart, backgrounds etc. that you can use to help you design your website.

Have fun!