Essential Components of Website Design
The Internet is filled with a vast array of website designs. This is because modern technology has enabled web designers to use different widgets and tools to create sites with better functions and aesthetic value than ever before. For example, many browsers are currently JavaScript enabled with many of them increasingly becoming Flash enabled. In spite of this trend, there are certain essential or basic web design components that must be adhered to, irrespective of the technology being used to ensure usability of a website. These components are fundamental during the planning stages of designing a website.
Browser compatibility: A website should be compatible across different web browsers, since internet surfers use different browsers depending on their preference. What may look good in Internet Explorer may appear disjointed in Google Chrome and may be totally unreadable in Safari. A website should be designed to be effective and to look good with all the popular web browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera Mini, Safari, and Google Chrome. One way to achieve cross-browser compatibility is to adhere to the WC3 guidelines of web design. Manual checking should also be done to further ensure compatibility.
Accessibility: A website that can be accessed by all has greater functionality and achieves better targeted traffic than one that is less accessible. By ensuring that your website can be used by people with poor vision or those that are unable to navigate through it with a mouse increases the accessibility of your website to different users. Ensure that the text you use in the website is large enough and strongly contrasts with the color of the background. By providing a link to the website's main content, you will allow visitors to navigate through the site without necessarily making use of a mouse. Providing re-sizable fonts will enable users to enlarge the website's content should they need to do so.
Easy navigation: A good and functional website design will feature a user-friendly navigation system that allows people to easily explore different pages and features in the website. Many users know how to use the vertical and horizontal menus and it is therefore safe to stick to this format. Tabs should also be provided to help visitors access major pages in the website such as Home, About Us, and Contact Us pages.
Fast loading times: Steer away from features that may compromise the loading time of your web pages such as huge images and heavy Flash gadgets. This is because most web users easily get frustrated with websites that take long to load, which causes them to close the pages and move on to other websites. To avoid this, ensure that your website loads faster by optimizing your images and utilizing text links whenever possible.
Contact details: Ensure that you clearly display your contact details in your web pages. Telephone details and email links should be provided on all your web pages together with a direct access to the "Contact Us" page. This is where details of the company address, together with your email, telephone, and contact us form should be contained. You can also include a photograph of your company to help establish consumer trust.
Browser compatibility: A website should be compatible across different web browsers, since internet surfers use different browsers depending on their preference. What may look good in Internet Explorer may appear disjointed in Google Chrome and may be totally unreadable in Safari. A website should be designed to be effective and to look good with all the popular web browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera Mini, Safari, and Google Chrome. One way to achieve cross-browser compatibility is to adhere to the WC3 guidelines of web design. Manual checking should also be done to further ensure compatibility.
Accessibility: A website that can be accessed by all has greater functionality and achieves better targeted traffic than one that is less accessible. By ensuring that your website can be used by people with poor vision or those that are unable to navigate through it with a mouse increases the accessibility of your website to different users. Ensure that the text you use in the website is large enough and strongly contrasts with the color of the background. By providing a link to the website's main content, you will allow visitors to navigate through the site without necessarily making use of a mouse. Providing re-sizable fonts will enable users to enlarge the website's content should they need to do so.
Easy navigation: A good and functional website design will feature a user-friendly navigation system that allows people to easily explore different pages and features in the website. Many users know how to use the vertical and horizontal menus and it is therefore safe to stick to this format. Tabs should also be provided to help visitors access major pages in the website such as Home, About Us, and Contact Us pages.
Fast loading times: Steer away from features that may compromise the loading time of your web pages such as huge images and heavy Flash gadgets. This is because most web users easily get frustrated with websites that take long to load, which causes them to close the pages and move on to other websites. To avoid this, ensure that your website loads faster by optimizing your images and utilizing text links whenever possible.
Contact details: Ensure that you clearly display your contact details in your web pages. Telephone details and email links should be provided on all your web pages together with a direct access to the "Contact Us" page. This is where details of the company address, together with your email, telephone, and contact us form should be contained. You can also include a photograph of your company to help establish consumer trust.
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