Basic Web Design Guidelines

The most important thing for the success of your website is its look. The services and the products that you offer are judged by the appearance of your website.
Many business failure occurred due to poor web designing. We sometimes don’t pay attention towards the appearance of your website which may lead to closing of website.
Web designing is an art and there is a need to follow basic steps to become a good web designer.

Designing a Template

As we know that “First Impression Is the Last Impression”, so the template you design for your website should be consistent so that each web page should look as a part of one website.
The most important thing for website designing is – designing a template. The template you make can be use to create each page of your web site. This will give entire site the same look and feel.
A template can be considered as a simple web page or shell of your entire web site. However, it won’t contain any content but it must contain the logos, images, links etc. but every time you create a template, you’ll save it with different page name.

Formatting Your Pages

It is highly recommend designing your entire page content within HTML tables. Tables will enable you to have complete control over your content and how it will be displayed. Tables also give structured look to your website.

For example, you can create three tables, stacked on top of each other, for each section of content. You can use cellpadding, cellspacing and border attributes give a right flow to your data. The top table would contain your page header content, the middle table would contain your content and the bottom table would contain your footer content.

As placing your entire page content within a single table will significantly increase your site's load time, stacking your tables will enable you to benefit from the powerful formatting capabilities of tables, while at the same time, keep your site's load time down.

Tables will enable you to display your content in sections like a newspaper, set up a specific number of rows and columns, and even place additional tables within your main content table to create special content sections with colored backgrounds.

Storefront of Your Page

The main page of your sit is the storefront for your business and it should be specifically designed in such a way that your visitors know exactly what you're offering. If your prospective customer can't find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never return. They are visiting your site for specific purpose so provide them what they want. If you do so than it will give benefits to you and your site.

Branding will play a major role in your success. Make sure you place your company logo and slogan on your home page as well as other pages also. This will not only provide publicity to your site but also give the same look and feel.

Instead of trying to cram all your content into your main page, consider creating sections. These sections can contain highlights of your information with a link to further information. You can set your sections up in tables with colored heading sections for information such as articles, products or whatever you'd like.

Last but not the least use the golden rule “less is more”. In other words, keep your main page content concise and impressive which includes all the important elements.

Navigation

When you start designing your pages, keep in mind, your visitor visit each and every page of your website. Provide good navigational links on each and every page. Place your navigational links to any corner of your page where you find is the suitable place for it. Use tables for the uniform appearance throughout.

Fonts

One of the most significant parts of a web page is text. The way in which you present the text on your web page will have a great impact on your success. It can make your page look very professional or very unprofessional.

When placing text within your web page, always be consistent with your fonts. In other words, don't use different fonts throughout your pages. Headlines are written in larger font size and are a bit different.

Background and Text Colors

Use caution when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site.

Select your colors very carefully, as colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well.

Bright colors can be used to show cheerful or happy emotions. Colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. While dark colors, such as brown and black, have a depressing effect.

The Things that are avoided
If you really want to design a good website than avoid the use of frames, flashes, complex URL, scrolling texts and high animations, outdated information etc.
If you follow these steps than sooner your website will become famous and will be on top of the search engines.