Common Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Website Design

While developing a website (or hiring a web/blog designer to create one for you), there are various specific items you need to be aware of. Things that normally wouldn't cross your mind. For the average person who wants a website or blog for their business, they are after one very important thing – sales. Now, they may tell you that they want the big flashy logos, or the overdone textures/gradients, but it is the job of a well skilled web designer to steer their clients in the right direction.

Below are twenty do’s and don’ts of effective web design.

DO: Keep your page structured: In the recent months we've seen an explosion of great grid layouts and css files. The most famous (in my opinion) being 960.gs and one of the cooler, more light weight grid systems being the 1kb grid. Following after the structure and balance of a great magazine/newspaper, these grid systems help lay out information in a structured and easy to follow format.

DONT: Just place boxes everywhere: We've all seen these types of websites before – 20+ boxes, all different sizes, nothing lining up properly and not on piece that actually grabs your attention because you’ve just ran into a whirlwind of craziness.

DO: Focus on what’s important: Website should be supportive to your product or service. Make sure that’s the focus of the home page. Allow yourself space on the inner pages to place calls to action for that specific item. If you’re building a blog that gives out freebies or writes tutorials, make sure they’re getting the proper amount of focus and attention.

DONT: Place irrelevant ads across your page: If you’re going to try and make money from your website/blog, do yourself a favor and lay off the excessive advertisements. If your page loads and has 70% ads and only 30% content, odds are high that people will leave and never come back. Making your ads the #1 priority is a bad idea. Try blending them in and making sure they don’t take away from the content.

DO: Choose the right color scheme: Knowing what your visitor’s emotions are will help you in choosing the proper color scheme. You won’t want a bright and ‘loud’ color scheme if your website is in the meditation niche.

DONT: Overdo it with 20 different colors: Having every color that is inside the 64 set of crayons on your screen will not only look bad, but it will annoy your readers and drive them away. Your colors should blend well together, not clash. Find the right color scheme (at most, 5 colors) and see how much better your designs turn out.

DO: Make it easy to scan your pages: People will not spend 5 minutes trying to figure out what your website is about and what it has to offer. The best way to ensure you’re getting the right information out to your reader is to make the page easy to scan. Use proper H tags (similar to how this post is using h3 tags) to focus on the important items. You can also use pull quotes, block quotes and images.

DONT: Write one paragraph per page that is 1,000+ words long: If there’s one thing that stops me from subscribing to a blog is that the posts are literally 1,000+ words and have no paragraph breaks. Break your content up and make it easier to read.

DO: Keep it simple: It’s a proven fact that sign up forms with more than 3 items (usually – name, email & one other item) will have a significantly lower sign up rate than the easier forms. People HATE doing things for too long – so don’t over complicate things. It definitely helps get things out in the open where they need to be.

DO: Focus on killer copywriting: Words matter. Keep them short, sweet and to the point. If you have trouble writing copy that attracts the reader’s attention to where you need it to go, hire someone. Copy is just as important as the design of your website. Choosing the right words for sign up buttons, page headings, navigation items and calls to action can be the difference between 50% sign up rate and a 90% sign up rate.

DONT: Stuff your pages full of keywords: Google isn’t stupid. Neither are your readers. If your page has the main keyword for your site stuffed into each paragraph 30-40 times, it will not only read very poorly, but you’ll be penalized. Writing should flow naturally and should only mention your keywords where they fit.

DO: Set your navigation up properly: If you’ve got a sign up page on your website, maybe you’ll have your main navigation in a blue color, while the sign up button is in a green color. Regardless, you’ll want to make your navigation easy to spot and easy to use.

DONT: Make your readers search to find something: Your readers shouldn’t spend 30-40 seconds trying to find a contact or about page. They also shouldn’t have to click through three pages just to get to a sign up form. Get the important things out in the open. For the items that aren’t required to have a strong focus on your website, you might want to invest in a search box.

DO: Optimize your load times: If there’s one recurring theme in this entire article it is the fact that visitors are impatient. You need to build your website with optimal speeds and allow your page to load in around 1-2 seconds. You can do this by making sure your .css files are compressed, using the Google hosted JavaScript files and ensure your page is coded and designed with optimal speeds in mind.

DO: Choose the right fonts and sizes: Making your section titles the right size and making sure the fonts you’re using will greatly affect the experience your visitors have when viewing your websites. Generally speaking, you should use one main font for the content and then you may switch the titles of the pages to a different font.

DONT: Have 5 different fonts in 10 different sizes: Picture this: Page titles are in times new roman, content for those pages are in Arial, navigation links are in comic sans and the sidebar is in impact (yes, that impact).