What is web design principles?
Web design principles are general rules for designing web site that include basic guidelines for the design of layouts and interaction design, design principles are derived from fields as varied as Human computer interaction, usability and user experience design, Graphic design and Formatting, Color theory, Design processes and models. They can stand alone as universal rules or be the basis for the development of design methodologies
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10 web design principles
Home Page
Home page should clearly show what the site is about. Given out top level navigation on the first page, your logo and navigation, tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be educational, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor chooses what he will do, click on some of your website links, or leave your website site. For example If you have a discount of you product , or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers and attractive, make sure there is available link to that service on your home page. U may also like:- How to Create a High-Quality website
If you choose to implement flash intro on your home page, make sure to give the user possibility to be able to skip the flash intro. The link “skip intro” should be outside of the flash, because you will force the web site viewer to wait until the Flash movie is loaded. U may also like:- How To Create A Web Site
Navigation structure / menu
Put the navigation / menu bar on the place where the people are used to look for it. Don’t experiment with the navigation! I can’t stress enough this. Keep the menu / navigation system same on ALL pages example at the top. Visitors are not prepared to learn your site navigation / menu system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your web site.
Font size
Your font size that is text size should be big enough, so your text can be read without stress. There are many people who will not bother to read very small words. Don’t lose your visitors because of font size. Optimal size seems to be 12, 13 or 14 font size. Visitors should be able to read your text easy, without any stress. Use big text size of texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.
Line Length
The length of a line of type have to be comfortable to read. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be about 11 to 13 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Somewhat shorter lines of about 45 to 50 characters may be more suitable for larger displays. If the line is too extended the reader must search for the beginning of it; if it is too short it will break up words or phrases awkwardly.
Creating emphasis
Creating emphasis is significant and integral part of web designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and good ruling it can help straight and inform the reader. When these qualities are lacking, or somebody feels that every word is significant and must be emphasized in some way then your web site starts to look like a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!
Graphics
We all know that one picture worth more than million words. This rule applies on Internet too. Do your best to show clear, attractive pictures of your product. If you offer a service, find a picture which will best describe your services or website. However, be careful about file size. Don’t compress your pictures to that level to not be clear, but also don’t leave the picture on full quality. That will make file size too big, and will increase time for your web site to load.
Gif vs. JPEG
Less skilled web designers many times use wrong picture format to store their photo. Below are some few guidelines which will help mistakes to be avoided. If your photo has small number of colors (less than 64) GIF will be better choice. Make sure however to reduce the photo size too. That is, if your image have10-15 colors only, decrease your palette on 16 or 32 colors.
Also, if your picture contains text, GIF format should be your best choice. JPEG use lousy compression technique and will cause text and limits to become blurry.
If you want to save photo save it as JPEG
JPEG images can contain over 32 million dissimilar colors. That is ample more than the human eye can see.
If you want to include large text into a graphic image, JPEG may be a good format to use. While the edges may still get blurred, danger of it becoming illegible is slim. If you think your picture is more important than the text, you can use the JPEG format.
Speed
Do your best to reduce the download time. We live in a busy world and people are not will to wait long time for your web site to load. Try to decrease size of your graphics as much as can without to destroy the image quality. Make sure Image look good, but size (in KB) should be as small as possible.
Test before publishing
Do your homework, and do it well. Your visitors will not bother to send you an E-Mail that some of your website links does not work or that some of your images does not appear. Even if someone do so, it is quite uncomfortable. Perform spell and grammar checking. Remember that in many cases web site visitor will build his opinion about you or your company on base on your web site. When published, web site should not contain any under construction or coming soon messages.
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