Website Design Issues

Internet today has become an important medium for people to communicate and do business online. But the basic thing we need online to carry out any task is a Website. For almost everything we need to visit a website which is known by different names in different context such as Portals, Vortals, Corporate Websites, CRM Websites, CMS Websites, Wiki Website, Flash Websites, Web 2.0 Websites, e-Commerce Websites etc. Thus we see, names are different but everything is a website. We know so many names because we are in a industry but what about a layman user. He knows all these things only by a single name i.e Website.

For him a website is useful and good only if it is aesthetically designed, intuitive and respond to his query in the minimum time. You must have heard the term “SEO” which is quite popular these days and what many people do or rather do it wrong is to design a website as per the optimization process and forget the user.

There are many website design companies claiming to be best Web Design Company or professional company showcasing strong portfolio but I found a website which is well designed for user as well as robots. Personally I will rate this web design firm 8 on a 10 point scale.

Important things to be kept in mind are:

1. Popup Window – It is the most annoying thing on the website. They are used for advertisement purposes but personally specking I must confess that I haven’t clicked a single popup in my online lifetime. Not only me but everyone hates them. So avoid it completely.

2. Puzzling Navigation – The online population does not have much time and have plenty of options. It is very necessary for a website to provide easy access to its content via clear and simple navigation. The navigation system must be easy for user to follow and simple for robots to crawl.

3. Flash – Use it only when it is necessary. Using it without any purpose makes the site heavier and the website takes time to load.

4. Consistent Style & Font – Use the style and font patterns consistently on every page. Don’t use different fonts on different pages. It does not look professional.

5. Color & Background – The background should be simple and not flashy and must not pain the eye. The color combination on website must be aesthetic and soothing to eyes.

6. CSS – Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) for controlling the appearance of website. It makes a lot easier for designer to maintain the website with the use of CSS and also makes the source page bit lighter in terms of coding.

7. Search Feature – If your website has lot of pages then adding a search feature on your website will be a good idea so as to help the user to quickly search for any term which he thinks might be in your website.