hallmark World Tech.

Designing a website could be challenging, especially if you are a newbie. I’ve put down some important points you should have at the back of your mind when designing your site. Please take your time to go through it so that you won’t make the mistakes I made.

1. Site description: Beautifully describe your site in seconds. Visitors are in a hurry to get what they are looking for and they have little time to search for it. So if you don’t go straight to the point telling them about your site, they’ll go straight to some other sites.

2. Accessibility of contents: it’s important that you arrange you site in a way that’s the info’s are easily assessable such that a maximum of three clicks takes you to the furthest content. If an info takes many clicks to reach, oops …. You might lose your visitors. Also

3. Use of fonts: whatever font you choose to use should blend with your page background. It should be easily readable. For instance, using a bright colored font on a bright background could be difficult to read. But using a black font on a white background is just okay. Try as much as possible to avoid fonts that looks so sophisticated.

4. Links: when a link is clicked whether external or internal, set it such that a NEW TAB is open and not A NEW WINDOW. The ‘back’ button is provided in your browser is there for a reason. Your visitors can always come back if they click a link that takes them to another website as long as you have quality content. Internal links makes you site to be easily navigable. At the base of your site, always make use of the ‘return’ button. You might have noticed ‘return to home’ in many authority sites.

5. Never subscribe the visitor for something without his consent: do not automatically subscribe a visitor to newsletters when he registers up on your site. Allow him/her to take the initiative. Just play you part by making the request inviting.

6. Flash animations: apart from increasing the load time of your website, excessive usage of Flash might also annoy the visitors. Use it only if you must offer features that are not supported by static pages.

7. Playing of audio files: some situations might require an audio file. You might need to deliver a speech to the user or your guided tour might have an audio component. That is fine. Just make sure that the user is in control, let him click the “Play” button. From personal observation, most people do not welcome that.

8. Use of badges: first of all, badges of networks and communities make a site look very unprofessional. Even if we are talking about awards and recognition badges you should place them on the “About Us” page.

9. Make sure to include contact details: there is nothing worse than a website that has no contact details. This is not bad only for the visitors, but also for yourself. You might lose important feedback along the way.

10. The structure of your web address (Url): should be easy to spell and remember. This is especially helpful when it is pronounced to you via a phone call. For instance you could use www.clean.com, in place of www.kklean.com. Also run away from hyphens (such as -, _) www.hallmarkworld.com is easier to spell and remember than www.halllmark_worldz.com

11. Use text navigation: text navigation is not only faster but it is also more reliable. Some users, for instance, browse the Internet with images turned off.

12. Make sure your website is cross-browser compatible: not all browsers are created equal, and not all of them interpret CSS and other languages on the same way. Like it or not, you will need to make your website compatible with the most used browsers on the market, else you will lose readers over the long term.

13. Make links visible: the visitor should be able to recognize what is clickable and what is not, easily. Make sure that your links have a contrasting color. Possibly also make them underlined.

14. Do not underline or color normal text: do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary. Just as users need to recognize links easily, they should not get the idea that something is clickable when in reality it is not.

15. Make clicked links change color: this point is also important in your web design. When a linked is clicked, it changes color. This helps your visitor not to unintentionally click links he has already visited.

16. Do not use harsh colors: if the user is getting a headache after visiting your site for 10 consecutive minutes, you probably should pick a better color scheme. Design the color palette around your objectives (i.e. deliver a mood, let the user focus on the content, etc.).

17. Include functional links on your footer: people are used to scrolling down to the footer of a website if they are not finding a specific information. At the very least you want to include a link to the Homepage and possibly a link to the “Contact Us” page.

18. Avoid long pages: if you plan to post a content that is very lengthy, try splitting them into pages. Not everybody has the patient to read length post.