Sunday, November 8, 2009

Important tips for your web portal -

In this age of web portfolios and digital job searching, website is a lifeline marketing tool. So how do we make our site informative and also attractive ?

Important Design tips for your web portal.

1. Colors and Images : Light text on white backgrounds and dark text on dark backgrounds is not the right combination. Especially if you have a lot of text, it is very important that it is easy to read and doesn't hurt people's eyes. It is better not to include images that are more than a few kilobytes. It is safer to use 10-12 kB images. This makes sure that your website does not take too much time to load.

2. Use less Eye Candy: Don't bother putting 'Eye Candy' on your site like menus with sounds. Some browsers don't support them. It is not necessary to incorporate several images in a webpage unless it is entirely meant for images. It is a good idea to strike a balance between an image and the content related to it.

3. Avoid Popup Window : They are extremely annoying and visitors don’t like to see them either. If your free web host gives you the option of a banner in a popup window or one at the top of the page choose the one on the page.

4. Keep Adverts To minimum : Too much adverts spoil the look and feel of your sites, and the visitors don’t like to see to many of them in screen. Although it may be tempting to have more adverts to try and make more money but just 2 or 3 highly targeted adverts will make you more money and your visitors won't give up and leave, either.

5. Hide Visitor Counter : It is extremely important to track your visitors, especially as your site grows, but showing the actual number of visitors serves no good purpose. If you have very few visitors then people who see that on your site will think it is unpopular, has no good content and will leave. If you have a lot of visitors then people won't really care about how many visitors you've had. It is better to use a good tracking service or hiding your counter.

6. Better Navigation : The visitors to your site won’t know where you put each piece of information. They need to be shown exactly where to find what they want. Use descriptive links. Always have an obvious link back to your homepage. If at all possible you should include a search function.

7. Don't Keep Moving Things : When designing a web site, the first thing you should remember is to keep a consistent design. The only page which can be different is the main page. If you keep moving around your site's navigation or if every page is completely different from the others, your visitors will get confused.

8. Visitors are Not Interested In You Or Your Awards : One of the mistakes that a lot of sites, especially smaller ones, make is to have too much on their website telling users about the person who built it and showcasing the awards the website has won. Most people on the web will be looking only for information. It is all right to have some information about you on a separate section of your site but don't make it a central part. Also, don't put awards all over your front page.

9. Don't Crowd The Screen : A very important thing to do when designing your website is to leave a bit of space. Even though screen space is precious and you should try and make the best use of it, try to leave some blank space. Leave margins, use shorter paragraphs and don't fill up the screen with animated GIFs. If there is space, your site will look 'clean' and 'open' and users will like it. Using animated GIFs will draw your users' attention away from your content, which is what they are at your site for. Never ever try images that come in multi-color that flash and blink comically.

10. Make Your Site Sticky : Some ways of making your site 'sticky' like this is to offer a service (like e-mail from Everyone.net), have a newsletter, update regularly or include news headlines on your site. It could save you a lot of time. Free E-mail Free News Headlines Care to add more.

Please add it as a comment. Thanks.

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