Seven Design Principles

In designing your website, there are hundreds of things to keep in mind, and the list changes with every new technology that comes out. However, principles rarely change (which is why they are principles). Here are seven principles of clean web design to keep in mind when designing your next website.

Copy

The copy you put on your site will vary depending upon the goals of your site. Do remember, however, that very few people read from a computer screen for fun or relaxation. Copy should help them achieve their purpose in coming to your website.

Most people are looking for specific information, so your copy needs to be “scannable”. For instance, try to keep your paragraphs to less than 4 sentences. Try to maximize the use of lists and bullet points, both of which lead to easy scanning. For key items, use bold to really make it stand out, but beware of bolding everything.

To increase comprehension, do not write like a writer; write like you would say it. This will make your writing sound less pretentious and much more understandable.

White space & text design

For over 500 years, we have been reading dark writing on a white page. Why? Because it works. There is something about the contrast between the two that makes reading easier, that makes the eyes more relaxed. Reversed print, or white on black, never tests well.

One change from print is that on the screen, many studies suggest a sans-serif font is easier to read instead of the recommended serif fonts for print media. Of course, make certain that whatever font you use is large enough to be read. Remember that the population segment over age 55 is growing everyday on the internet and they appreciate the larger fonts.

When surfing around the internet, you get the feeling that many designers are afraid of white space. It is as if they want to cram as much text as possible into the space. Just like the space between the notes is what makes music beautiful, it is the white space on the page that gives the text space to breathe, that makes the eye glide on the page and actually makes the text easy to read.

Pictures

While it is a cliche, sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words. If you are selling a product, pictures of it are almost mandatory, but even if your website is more information oriented, often a suitable picture can sum up the mood of the article succinctly, thus putting the reader in the right “frame of mind” to read it. Study after study shows that people looking at a web page will look at the pictures first.

Many people still have holdover fears from the early days of the internet and are reluctant to place pictures on their site over fear of slowing down the page. While of course you do not want to bloat the page with huge image files, if your pictures are properly formatted and are of a reasonable size, most modern browsers will have no problems. Proper coding ensures that the pictures are not loaded until after the text, anyway.

Graphics

Properly done, graphics can really add to a website, providing consistency and greatly improving your credibility. However, nothing gives the impression of an amateur website faster than having graphics scattered across it haphazardly. Additionally, animation can annoy and confuse people, and if the graphics do not match your products, you risk confusion on the part of your customer. As we all know, confused people do not buy anything!

Be easy to navigate

One large consideration in designing your site is the navigation: How are all these visitors going to get around on your site? Some key things to remember are:

* Try not to have more than 8 links in your main directory. Choice fatigue quickly sets in and people will leave rather than analyze all the choices.
* Keep your navigation in a hierarchy; strive for a few main categories with sub-categories under each one.
* Done properly (and tastefully) graphics can be a huge aid to navigation.
* Never underline text. On the web, readers have come to expect underlined text to be a hyper-link to another web page. If you need to emphasize text, consider using bold or italics.

Be credible

Ours is a skeptical age, and that is only going to get worse over time. These days, we almost expect to get ripped off. Your reader needs to be reassured constantly that you (and your website) are credible, safe and trustworthy.

Credibility comes in many shapes and forms, but here are a few simple things you can do to increase your credibility.

* While it may seem very “old school”, the fact is testimonials work! Especially if you are asking people to spend any money, you should consider ways to add testimonials into your website.
* Try a warranty or a guarantee. However, these are not as strong as they once were because today’s consumer has come to expect them.
* Look Professional. People are not eager to trust a website that looks as if it were designed by your 16 year old.
* Secure Credit Card Processing. This is a no-brainer. If nothing else, use PayPal or another merchant account provider.
* Your own domain name. Seriously; am I supposed to trust a company that can’t be bothered to spend $10 for a proper domain name?
* A Privacy Policy. We are all concerned about our privacy these days. It seems everyone knows someone who is the victim of identity theft. In this environment, a privacy policy is a must-have.

Never Be Finished

Understand on the front end that your website will never truly be finished. That is, it should constantly be tweaked and adjusted to make the user experience better, to respond to new input from the market, to relay new information.

But beyond that, there are legitimate reasons your site should never “want” to be finished. For one thing, sites which are updated often are better indexed by the search engines, leading to higher rankings in the search engines that less frequently updated sites. In addition, when you update your site constantly, it gives visitors to your site a reason to come back. For both of these reasons, you should consider having either a blog or breaking news page integrated into your website.

A website can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal if you are willing to put the time and effort into it to make it work. Realize, however, that it takes a commitment of both money and time to see the results you are looking for.