Website Design Tips

Here are some basic tips to make your website look professional and be easy to read.

Do

Plan your content in advanceMake your site easy to navigate – put the most important items nearer the top of the menu.Update your site regularlyLimit the amount of text on each page

 to no more than 2 screenfuls. If you have more than this, consider splitting it into sub-pages.

Include more blank space than you would in printed formats as it makes it easier to read on screen

Remember to use a spell check

Use contrasting colours to make your text easy to read. Black is always best for large amount of text.

Use just a few colours

Make links blue or underlined, or both as this is the convention on the internet

Explain what you are linking to, rather than putting Click Here which doesn't help people using screen readers

Use commonly available fonts. Sans serif fonts, such as Arial, Helvetica and Verdana, are easiest to read on screen

Compress your images so that they load quickly

Provide an alt tag or image description for your images, which helps people using screen readers.

Avoid doing the following, which will make your website look amateur or make it harder to read.

Don't

Use blinking or scrolling text or flashing images

Use images as backgrounds

Type more than a few words in ALL CAPITALS (on the internet this means you are shouting ) or in Italics (this is hard to read)

Use more than one exclamation point

Underline words if they're not links. On the internet, underlining means something is a link so your visitors will probably try to click on something if it is underlined

Open internal links in a new window

Put up Under construction page - wait until you are ready to make your site or page live

Put a date when the page was last updated on your site as it could make your site look out of date when it isn't as certain information may not need to change regularly

Use Page Counters - they look amateur and nobody else needs to know how many people have visited your site.