A web site can certainly be labeled as the representation of a company or an person on the internet. It’s through a website that people will get the 1st impression about a firm. And when individuals visit your web site, they come with certain expectations – conscious expectations (information they are looking for) and sub-conscious expectations (visual appeal, easy navigation etc). So, follow this advice and these guidelines, which help you meet such expectations:

1. Understand your audience

There are 2 elements which are influenced by this guideline- the design (including the layout, graphics, colors etc) as well as the content (articles along with other written material). By way of example, if you are designing a website for kids, you might consider selecting cartoons and a colorful impression instead of a more peaceful look which is better fit for business web sites. Similarly, the style, tone and examples used in your content are going to be dependent on the kind of audience too.

2. Navigation

Alright, so you have done the audience evaluation and possess all the right content and images etc on your web site; however, if individuals (your website visitors) cannot reach that information easily, it would be of no use at all. Therefore, it is crucial that your website is easy to navigate through. No page should be over three clicks away. Also, there should be a frequent pattern that you should follow for navigation across your web site. An additional beneficial practice is to have a navigation bar on the top (and bottom) or on the sides of your web pages.

3. Response time

In today’s fast paced world, people don’t want to wait for anything and it might be unreasonable to expect them to wait for your website to load. For this reason, it is necessary that your web pages load swiftly otherwise your visitors may go away even before your website loads. An excellent web designer will ensure that the images and multi-media are lightweight so that the web site loads quickly. Nevertheless, with quicker internet connections, this element of website design has assumed a lesser significance than what it used to be in earlier times; but still, this can be a very important aspect.

4. Cross web browser compatibility

As technologies advance and technology companies wrestle for supremacy, new software products (and updates) are being launched constantly. And web browsers haven’t been left out in this race for power. Which means you will find a whole lot of web browsers that are available and are being employed across the globe by various groups of people; and, though most web browsers comply with W3C norms, they still do their own thing. So, your web site could look and work differently in different web browsers. Hence, cross browser compatibility is a crucial aspect of web site designing. A sensible way to ensure that most of your stuff works across web browsers would be to verify your web site using the W3C mark-up validation service.

5. Uniformity

Your website design ought to be uniform in every respect – layout of various web pages, the color combinations, images, navigation, language etc. The majority of people will take the cue from what they see on your main page. Inconsistent web site design will confuse your audience and might lead them away from your web site.

If you follow these 5 basic tips / guidelines, you may never go wrong with your web design. So, take advantage of these guidelines.

Source: http://www.artipot.com/articles/531534/5-web-design-tips-and-guidelines-that-you-should-know.htm