Ingredients for a delicious website !!!
Website Under Construction
Well, To be Frank there are lot of details which should be taken into consideration when it comes to design and develop a good website, And It will be like a never ending list – But,There are some specific elements which should be prime consideration in the mind of web designer or developer while building any successful website i.e. personal blog,portfolio or a business website.
After completing the planning phase of your website, The Ingredient elements fall into the following broad categories :
1.Attractive Visual Design
Graphic Design
We all know “looks Matters a lot“. I can’t say about all of you , But If a land on a website that lacks attractive visual design,I will close the browsing tab without even looking the Header of that website !
This golden rule is applicable everywhere from an e-commerce portal to a discussion forum website layouts.
A simpler and tidy design is generally all you need. Sparkling lights may look nice but I’m one who believes in “theory of simplicity”. Don’t make your design over-crowded as it will lead to confusion in minds of your potential customers visiting your website.
“First Impression is the Last Impression” , Keep this is your mind.
2.Easy to Adapt User Interface
User Interface
Along with a good visual design comes a easy to adapt user Interface. User Interface is the base of any functioning website.While designing the website,Designer need to consider a average user/visitor .Designer should question to himself – Who will be visiting the website(Teen,Businessmen,Corporate Clients)? ,Are they techies ?, Who is your Ideal visitor ?
It’s good to build a image of the ideal visitor while building the layout design of your website.Make sure that you give them what the actually searched for on the internet i.e. subscriptions,products or any kind of services.
Also make sure to provide easy navigation to the visitors throughout your website.
3.Primary Navigation Menu
Primary Navigation
Having an easy to navigate menu is a very crucial factor in website designing.Keeping in mind the present world scenario, growing screen resolutions “Header” is generally considered to be within the top 500-600 pixels of your site design.
Elements which should be included here are your brand logo (which must link back to your home page), as well as links to the main sections of your site. If you can link to sub-pages here that will be great, but in some cases that can over-crowd your design.
4.Secondary Navigation Menu
While using graphics (or even flash) for your main navigation, it’s necessary to provide a duplicate set of navigation links in your footer(bottom of website). Even if you use text links at the top, the duplication is still helpful.
Generally,footer will also links to additional information resource — such as Privacy Policy,Cookie Policy or Terms of Service — as well. Things that should be easy to find, but not necessarily something you want to put on the primary navigation field of the website.
5.Sensible & Quality Content
Quality Content
You may have a attractive design website but it will be of no use,if it lacks in sensible content.When giving the content on your website sections,it’s crucial to provide related, knowledgeable information about your company, products, services, etc. In case of a blog, informative articles or posts related to your area of expertise are incredibly helpful as well.
6.Contact Us Page
Contact Us
Worst possible nightmare of any business owner is that the potential customers visiting their website are not able to contact them.
Provide a simple “contact us” form/widget in which the visitor can fill up his name,email address,phone no. and message(he wants to convey).
7.Web Analytics and Tracking
Web Analytics & Tracking
This is the part which is direct requirement of the website owner instead of the visitor,It comes under back stage tasks…
Questions which a website owner must want to know :
- No. of hits does my site receive?
- No. of unique visitors?
- No. of Direct Visitors?
- Keywords Traffic?
- Referral Websites?
- Popular pages of my website?
- Who is my average visitor (platform / browser / screen resolution)?
This can be achieved by using services like Google analytics, Tynt Tracer, Quantcast etc…
8.Compressed Images
Image Compression
Loading speed of any website’s homepage matters a lot,Even Google ranks the fast loading sites higher in their listings.
Page Size can be reduced by compressing the images displayed on the website pages.Services which can be used for image compression is yahoo smushit
There are some other important factors also like S.E.O.(Search Engine Optimization),Cross-Browser Compatibility,Social Links Engagement etc…
Please visit my favorite WebRiti & TheBlogBowl websites for having a look of ideal website with attractive design,adaptable user-interface and easy to go navigation.
@Devender Singh
Being a web developer(webmaster),I had designed many websites for corporate services,businesses as well as personal blogs like Storyofpen,ProShield etc… and I would love to work with webriti team in future.
