Web design is an exact science. There is no miracle behind it. No magic pills or supernatural beans, etc. It is also an art, yes, but in the end what great web design comes down to is fundamental rules laid out to please the eyes of the visitor. Call it eye-candy. Pros like to call it great and effective web design.

There are a couple pointers for building a great, and successful, website. All of these should be common knowledge to a professional web designer. But for those only starting out, it is highly recommended you learn these pointers before attempting to create your own website. Don\’t look at it as wasted time. Why take the risk of creating a mediocre website now when you can study first and build a great website later?

Here are the top 5 characteristics of a great website:

1. A great website knows its audience
A great website has the ability to speak and reach out to its audience from its home page alone. That is, my dear, the hallmark of a great website. A website must know its audience. So it can present right away what its audience needs and wants to know. If your website takes three and a half pages to give the visitor what he wants, you\’re doing it wrong.

2. A great website has short pages
This is not a solid rule, but it helps to keep your pages short and direct to the point. Thing is the internet is a fast-paced world of digital information. The people browsing it want instant gratification. You\’re doing a good job if your audience can get the message with minimal scrolling. Longer pages are okay, too, but keep their numbers to a bare minimum.

The average recommended screen size is 640 (pixels) wide by 480 tall.

3. A great website uses a table of contents
According to a study by Jakob Nielsen, only about 10% of visitors go past the first page of a website. So if your home page has a table of contents with descriptive links detailing the content of the other pages, your visitors are more likely to click on the links and explore the rest of your website.

4. A great website uses small images
Not everyone is browsing from a high-end computer. Some people, in fact, are still running on Windows 98 or 2000 and a 56k modem. These people will never get your website to show up on their screens because the images take too long to download.

A simple way around this problem is to use smaller images. Large, scrollable images annoy people, and that\’s that.

5. A great website avoids blocks of text
Same with keeping pages short, visitors aren\’t too thrilled to find out they need to read an entire essay on the home page alone. If you want your audience to stay, make every word count and keep your paragraphs short.

Following these pointers will lead you to build a website that is effective and cost-efficient.

Author Bio: Calgary Web Design is a great resource of up-to-date web design strategies and techniques for service professionals and small business owners in the Calgary area. Feel free to visit the website at Web Design Calgary for more info on consultation services. Or you can simply visit the website simply for more related articles on web design.

Category: Internet
Keywords: calgary web design, web design calgary