| The popularity of the World Wide Web has made | | | | 5. Avoid flash (or too much of it). Flash animation |
| web design one of the most sought after services in | | | | enhances user experience and gives a website a |
| many parts of the world. Not only are web design | | | | more "modern" look. But the downside is it may take |
| services in demand in first world countries where | | | | a long time to load which may not be good especially |
| almost everyone has access to the Internet, | | | | when not everybody has high speed Internet |
| developing countries such as India and the Philippines | | | | connection. |
| have also shown drastic growth in their web design | | | | 6. Make a sitemap. One of the basic concepts in web |
| industry. A web designer would always want to build | | | | design that a number of websites seem to take for |
| a website that would encourage new users to visit | | | | granted. Sitemaps provide users an easy access to |
| back. With that in mind, web designers should always | | | | the rest of the pages of the website, giving them an |
| keep into consideration the following basic concepts | | | | easier time to look for the content that they want. |
| in web design which can come in handy in terms of | | | | Sitemaps are also important since they make it easy |
| design improvement and usability. | | | | for search engine robots to crawl the pages of the |
| 1. Only use safe colors and color combinations. As | | | | website making indexing easier. |
| much as possible only use a maximum of 5 or 6 | | | | 7. Easy navigation/usability. The last thing that a web |
| colors on a website including text. Having to many | | | | designer would want is to confuse visitors with |
| colors may cause conflict in combination and may | | | | complicated navigational buttons. A website should |
| become eye-straining. It's also better to have a solid | | | | make sure that its visitors have easy access to its |
| text background so that the content is easily | | | | content |
| readable. | | | | 8. Provide a search box. When navigation fails to |
| 2. Fonts and font size matter. Just as colors may | | | | assist users, their tendency is to look for a search |
| affect the user's first impression, fonts and font size | | | | box. A website should always have a search box to |
| are an important element of a website as well. Using | | | | further help users in obtaining the information the |
| easy to read fonts such as Arial and Times New | | | | they want. Failure to do so may force visitors to look |
| Roman is better especially in the content area. | | | | for another website instead. |
| 3. Use meta tags. One of the basic concepts in doing | | | | 9. Lastly, Avoid too much ads. Not only that too |
| offline search engine optimization, meta tags help | | | | much ads may become annoying (especially flashy |
| search engine robots categorize a web page. Placing | | | | banners and pop up ads) for users, too much ads |
| a targeted keyword in the title tag is essential and | | | | means longer loading time, an issue that may cost a |
| can boost the search engine ranking of a website. | | | | website its visitors. |
| 4. Too many images. Using images enhances the | | | | With millions of existing websites and thousands of |
| appearance of a website, but let us not forget that | | | | competitors on targeted keywords, websites should |
| images are heavier than text in terms of file size. | | | | make sure that they are providing maximum usability |
| Thus a web page with a lot of images may take | | | | to their users. These basic tips are focused on |
| time to load and may cause a website to lose | | | | enhancing the usability of a website, an aspect that |
| visitors. For SEO purposes, images should come with | | | | should be given the same amount of importance and |
| an alt tag in order to be crawlable by search engine | | | | consideration as with the visuals and content of a |
| robots. | | | | website. |