Web Hosting - Web Design

Designing Your First Website
Submitted By: Benedict Smythe

Designing a website is pretty exciting, more so if you are a newbie and you happen to be building your very
first website. You might be tempted to be all out and give your website all the trimmings to make it nice
looking. Here’s a word of caution: too many frills on your website could cause you to lose the most important
reason for the creation of the website-visitors.

Flashy pages, colorful graphics, elaborate and heavy scripts as well as bouncing animation could cause visitors
to be distracted instead of being interested with the contents of your website.

Creating attractively designed websites is of course important to create good impression but most webmasters
overlook the most vital part of a website and that is content. Most internet surfers or browsers come to the
site exclusively to get information. And these visitors will not stay for more than a few seconds because the
website is slow loading due to heavy images or because of complicated animations. Visitors would surely click
on the next site. For sure you wouldn’t want that to happen.

For the benefit of your readers, you have to create pages that are clear and readable. You can do this by
providing ample white space between contents. Using darker text over light background is eye catching as
well as providing ease to the reader. Choosing the fonts is equally important. You can choose from the many
available fonts in the computer. For a good measure, choose a font size that is readable to all types of readers.
Smaller sized fonts could be the in thing for the young generation but older readers will appreciate bigger sized
fonts. You will be thanked by the readers if they don’t have to install new fonts just to read your content. You
may want to add graphics to your website. It is important however to be certain that the graphics would
enhance the site rather than distract visitors.

For your image formats, you can use the Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) for drawings. This format is most
suitable for black and white images. For more complex and intricate graphics and photographs, Joint
Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) is most suitable because it maintains 16 million colors most appropriate
for pictures and complicated graphics.

Another important factor to consider in building your first website: browsers are generally “lazy” people. They
just scan the page. They don’t really sit and read the content unless their attention is grabbed and they are
hooked by the keywords. Be sure to provide cues and keywords that will help the readers in their search for
information. Write simple conversational sentences and avoid using jargon. Try to keep your paragraphs short
so as to keep the readers interested.

Navigation is crucial to any website. Studies showed that left side navigation is favored by most people.
Having your navigation bar on the left side of the page will provide ease to the visitor. Placing pertinent links to
other sites is equally important as a lot of visitors would look for links whenever they are searching for
information.

About the Author
Dolphin Promotions is a web design and SEO company based in Blackpool in the UK. Published At:
www.Isnare.com