Okay! It is now time to learn a bit about good web page design. The first step to a good web page design has to do with the overall look and feel of your web site.
If you’re using one of the web building tools mentioned in the previous lesson, then choosing a look and feel is just a matter of selecting one of the available templates and then continue on with adding your content.
Using existing web site templates for your web site look and feel is probably the fastest way to design a site.
Although this is fine, ideally, it would be best if you customize the templates slightly. Or even better still, have a complete unique look that ‘brands’ your web site. This will make your site look less like a cookie cutter site i.e. the same as a few others. Your visitors might get confused when they see another site that looks just like yours but has different content.
The easiest way to customize your web site is simply to add your logo.
What’s good web page design?
If you’re going to go all the way and give your site a completely new and unique look, or even if you’re just going to choose a template, here are just some good web page design tips to keep in mind:
- Keep to the norm - Don’t make your visitors think. Try and keep to normal practices as much as you can. A link called ‘Home’, for example, should lead to your homepage. Don’t give your links fancy names, that require some thinking on the part of your visitor. Your web site should have an intuitive feel to it. Someone should be able to come to your site and know instantly how to navigate around. Here are just some of the more common features of a web site:
- A top or left navigation system (though more and more blogs have their navigation on the right).
- Additional text navigation at the bottom.
- Light background.
- Dark body text.
- Logo in the upper left corner which usually leads to the homepage when clicked on.
- Underlined hyperlinks (usually blue).
- Be consistent - throughout your site. So that your visitors know that they are still on your site and have not ventured away.
- Keep it simple - No, you don’t need any of those fancy Flash movies on your web pages. And no, you definitely do not need 10 web graphics on a single page. Keep it light and easy to digest yet professional. Think Google.
- Privacy statement, terms and conditions - It has become more and more of a practice for professional web sites to include privacy statements and term and conditions on their site. You would have much happier visitors if they knew what information you collect from them while they’re on your site and how you intend to use them.
- Contact information - Leave a way for your visitors to contact you. Having a physical address can also go a long way in establishing trust.
For a more complete course on good web page design, check out Make Your Site Sell. It’s one of my favourite guides and it’s only $29.95 (this guide is now FREE so you have absolutely no excuse not to get it).
How do you create a look for your website?
With SBI, all you have to do is click on the “Look and Feel” button, look at all the available “looks” and select the one that you like. And presto, your web site has just adopted a new look. You can change your look and feel as often as you want, though not a good idea, without messing up your content. With SBI, you can further customize the “look” of your choice or create your own “look” from scratch.
With WordPress, you just click on the “Presentation” tab and click on the “look” that you want. WordPress installations come with two “looks” but you can add “unlimited” number of “looks” to your copy of WordPress. (I’ll be adding a video screencast on this soon. So keep an eye out for the update). You can add from among hundreds of free WordPress templates available on the net or you can hire someone to create a unique WordPress template just for you. Changing “looks” will not affect your content. If you’ve reached a stage where you’d like a customized WordPress template, check out this WordPress template designer.
Here’s what you have to go through, if you used a normal web page editing software such as Nvu. Check out how to create your look and feel from scratch using Nvu. You don’t have to start from scratch. You can always use a website template like any of the ones that you are receiving free with this series of lessons. To use a template, just open the template file from within Nvu.
With Nvu (and other software of its nature), once you have chosen a template, it is not easy to change it. If you have 100 web pages in your web site, you will have to manually change each web page. There is no separation between design and content. Something to think about.
