Five Ways to Improve Web Design

Look at successful and powerful websites to an idea of what works.

Your website should load quickly and be easy to read. Visitors are less likely to stay on a website that's unpleasant to the eye, and an unprofessional website diminishes the credibility of your content, no matter how accurate it may be. Examples of poorly designed websites include having blocks of text without enough white space to relieve the eye, layouts that require horizontal scrolling, colors that are too bright or have poor contrast, and pages with too many high-resolution images.

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Keep It Simple
- While an elaborate and unusual design can be more artistic, the most effective websites stick to the simple modular layouts with static headers and sidebars for one reason: it works. The less time visitors spend focusing on your layout, the more they spend on your content. Avoid intricate imagery and make sure that the font is well contrasted with the rest of your page. Dark text on a light background reads naturally. Remove any badges and widgets that do not relate directly to the content or message of your website -- such as those that display your personal beliefs on a professional website, or local weather widgets on a website unrelated to weather or environmental issues. Cutting back on these elements reduces the load time of your site.
Use Standard Code
- It's easy to accidentally use depreciated and non-standard code on your website; despite not being standard, most HTML coding will still work. For instance, the popular CSS for recoloring your scrollbar is not standard code and only works with Internet Explorer; it should be avoided. Another example is the <font> tag; once standard for styling your font, the tag is now depreciated. Instead, use CSS to style and manage the design on your website.
Date Your Content
- Dating your content is a small step that can go a long way in making your website seem more credible. By making sure that your footer and copyright notices are current, as well as leaving a line about when a page was last updated, you tell your visitors that your website is being maintained. This indicates to your visitors that your information is up-to-date. If your website is also a blog, make sure that your blog entries are displaying a post date.
Use Legible Text
- Font matters -- the text of your website is the bulk of your content, and visitors will have a hard time reading your website if the text is poorly styled. Use a font that provides strong enough contrast with your background, is easy to read, and is large enough to legible on all screen resolutions. Avoid decorative or script fonts, such as Lucida Handwriting or Blackadder, as they can be hard to read and not everyone has the same extra fonts on their computer. Instead stick with the basic sans serif fonts. Avoid Comic Sans as a base font; while it's an effective and simple font, even the creator of the Comic Sans font, Vincent Connare, said he did not intend for the font to see such widespread use.
Balance Your Content
- You can have a little bit of everything on your website: videos, images, text and even embedded music. The trick isn't to avoid these things, but to balance them so that the visitor's eye flows naturally from one element to another. Make sure that text isn't bunched together, and that you have enough white space, by using paragraph breaks between sections. A paragraph break inserts an empty line between paragraphs. Set enough space around images and embedded videos -- an element called "padding" -- so that your text doesn't run right up against the edges of your other content.

Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

Five Ways to Improve Web Design

Other People Are Reading

Keep It Simple

Use Standard Code

Date Your Content

Use Legible Text

Balance Your Content

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