Quick Website Design Tips

Some general website design tips you might find helpful.

	Most people are looking for information. They want it now, not later. A large number of them are still on dial-up modem services. Try to have your pages load as fast as possible.
	For that reason, avoid the use of video and audio content that plays automatically when the page loads. If you feel you must include either of these features, make sure you give the viewer a player button he can click on, IF he wants to see or hear more. Don't make the decision for them, be polite.  There is nothing more annoying than going to a page, get the message 'downloading video', then 5 seconds later find that only 3% of it has been loaded. Most people will just leave your site at that point, never to return.
	Try and write content that is genuinely useful. When in doubt, leave it out. You've probably heard the saying 'Content is King'. Its not quite true - only GOOD content is King.
	You may just love white italic gothic text on a black background. Who cares. A good web page has nothing to do with beauty, fancy graphics, or amusing animations. Its job is to convey information to its viewers in the most efficient way possible, not make them say 'ooh isn't that pretty'. Simple is best. Have a good look at http://www.google.com.au . How much more plainer and functional could you get? Do you think the Google design team have it got it wrong?

Learn from what others do

If the truth be known, most of us learn about html coding by looking at the coding used on other websites. You can easily look at the underlying html code for a web page by clicking on the 'view' option in your browser menu section, and looking for a choice that says something like 'page source'.

As a general principle I recommend you always ensure that your web page code is always fully compliant with the html standards, such as HTML 4.01. This means you should avoid any features (such as Flash), that can be shown only in Microsoft browsers. Apart from anything else, this ensures that no matter what browser a person is using, they should be able to view your web page without any problems.

If over time you create a large website, and your code uses features found only in MS Windows, or the Explorer browser, you may well face problems down the track when Microsoft release security patchs or new browser and operating system versions are made available.

Keep your website design simple, consistent over the whole site, with little or no flashy features and make sure your coding is standard compliant.

There are lots of tools which make your website creation a lot easier. You can  find some of them here.  But you will still find it very useful to have some basic html knowledge under your belt when you only need minor changes made.