How to design a website that works

For some webmasters the only important thing to consider with a website design is that it looks nice. I can understand this from a basic point of view but creating a site that works for users is more than just picking nice colors. This is even truer if you depend on your site to generate sales/customers because a bad design will lose you both.

The navigation of your site is vital for getting people to the content they want. If you have some weird or wacky system for moving around the site people won’t hang around, make sure it’s in colors that are easy to read too. Never sacrifice usability for design.

Flash has been around for a long time and in small doses it can really brighten a site up, i.e. a rotating banner. However there are too many problems with sites that are all flash. They don’t work on iphones, google can’t index them, you can’t use the back/forward buttons in your browser. For these reasons I suggest you avoid full flash at all costs.

Too much information is another trap that many webmasters fall into. I see this problem a lot with ecommerce sites where they list a thousand technical specs no-one is interested in. Condense your info into manageable chunks so people can find what they want fast.

Many webmasters only test their sites design in the browser they use but this is a serious mistake. Not only do you need to test in different browsers but the different versions of each. For example older versions of internet explorer render some designs very differently than the latest one. You really have to test them all to know.

My last tip is to make sure your design and theme is consistent across all pages. There’s nothing more unprofessional than a site which changes font or colour depending on which page you’re on. Remember if you want people to buy from your store or make an enquiry they need to trust that you are a professional and well designed site is part of that.