It is the holiday season upon us and many of you are looking forward to the celebration while some might not however way you choose to celebrate this season i just want to wish you all the best and success and prosperity for the coming year. I must say that blogging would not have been the same without you and i would not have it any other way.Blogging is not a one man game we need each other to survive in this competitive blogging atmosphere as more and more blogs appears everyday. Have yourself a happy and a peaceful holiday and stay safe.
Your blog is your business and as such you should treat it that way. Lets look at it this way as bloggers you blog is like the headquarters of your business so you need to treat it that way. If your blog is your business then a good design is important so it is a very wise idea to have good design practises. This will make sure that your site reaches its intended audiences and attract the maximum numbered of visitors possible. How to practice good design principles? There are some basics of designing a website or blog that makes the difference between a good design and a bad one.
(1) Navigation this is one of the single most important aspect of any web design if is vital the you make sure that you have a clear navigational structure and that you pages are always linking back to your main page.The navigation menu should be simple and straightforward your visitors should never have to guess their way around your blog. Make it easy for your readers to find their way around your Website it is that simple. having a poor navigational structure will put off readers and make them frustrated and leave your site no matter how useful your contents may be.
(2) Images are great to look at and is believe to attract more clicks. Reducing the number of images on your website is advisable. Images looks good on your website however they can cause your website to load very slowly but if they are necessary then they must be optimize and kept to the minimum size this will allow them to load faster and where possible use sprite. The use of sprite is great as this reduce server calls and the image only needs to be loaded once.
(3) Content Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If you have a paragraph that is very long, you should consider splitting it into more than one paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is vital as very blogger will tell you that when your paragraph is lengthy readers sometimes gets bored or looses interest and most importantly forget what the paragraph is about by the time they reaches the end. So keep it short and straight to the point.
(4) Scripting and Standard Compliance Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.Scripting is another area needs to look at avoid to much heavy scripts and make sure that they are fully supported by most if not all browsers.
These are four of the areas that if adhere to will constitute good design principles they are many more that can be add i just look at a few of the basics. feel free to add your thoughts while leaving your comment. Have your self a wonderful holiday and stay safe just remember if you can’t be good be careful.Do you practice good design principle?
Cool tips 🙂 which must be followed. A site which has a poor navigational structure is a big turn off.
Thanks Shabnam navigational structure on our blogs are just like sat nav the better they are theeasier to find your way around thanks for adding your voice to the debate have a Wondeful holiday season
Number 4 is the one I get the most with my clients, they have a great website that looks amazing in Firefox and maybe even in Chrome, but when a regular uses view’s it he uses Internet Explorer BS and gets the approximate quality of BS.
Designer’s life would be much easier if they just banned IE from existence, I see no point in it 🙂 But that is just me…
Internet Explorer is the pain for all of us the biggest issue we face is that it is still the dominat browser on the market with about two thirds of among users however it is rumoured that the long awaited IE9 is more standard compliant that the rest so lets wait and see.
Very well explained design principles. Nothing fascinates me much more than the design part. The points you have explained above are must follow for any web designer. I can see that to have a good design for a site or a blog is not at all a big deal today as be it the Google Blogger or WordPress, you can find ‘n’ number of beautiful designs for the same. To me, it is more about the customization part. How to finally make it look it more beautiful and better with the customization I prefer. This is an area where I have been working like anything. Hope it all goes well 😉
Anyways, wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year…Cheers!!
I come that realize that like my self you are very much fascinated with the design aspect of your website for me this is the part i spend must of the time tweaking you are doing great with customization. Thanks for your comment and have youself a wonderful holiday.
Good explanation! If your designing is attractive and meaning full content, Anyone can’t prevent traffic on your blog. http://www.indiacube.com
Since this is your first visit here i must take the time to welcome you to my blog and hope that this is not your lost visit Thanks for taking the time to add your voice to the debate have a wonderful holiday
Good postings on good blog i read this blog with very much interest it has got all the required issues,keep it up and good work going.
Thanks a lot and i must take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful festive season hope you have a prosperous 2011 you input here is always appreciated.
Good tips Gary, 4 is very important, when I launched my new theme was great in Chrome but had some problem on Internet Explorer and Firefox. Opera…….ops, I have to check yet 🙂
That is the trouble Nicola we design our site it looks good in one browser but it breaks in the other another good rule is to design test and test some much a bit time consuming but we owe it to ourselves to make sure our readers have a pleasant experince whatever the browser they use.
Gary, You mentioned four LOL! Kidding.
I think, Navigation and Content are two undisputed principles everyone really need to consider to improve usability of overall website. Images can be replaced with videos but don’t think they’re that important unless they’re illustrations, graphs etc.. Though depend on niches too.
If i hire a good designer, I’d always look that he/she designed a well commented, compliant design only.
Nice article friend.
You got that spot on Kim i did mention 4 the last one is a bonus navigational structure and content are very vital to our design because if you have good content then you need your readers to be able to find their way around your website
Designing for W3 is close to impossible and I’m yet to find a website that can write a script that fully complies to it, except for w3 itself lol.
I agree with you but you should not let that deter you from writing good Standard Compliant Markup as trhey say practise makes perfect I do hope you have a wonderful and festive season thanks for your comment.
These are Awesome and Interesting Points for Designing Point of View, I must Consider these Further But these are 4 not 3 🙂
Thanks for pointing that out number four is actually a bonus thanks for adding your voice to the debate i do hope you have enjoyed the festive season and wish you all the best for the new year.
Great Article! Some times you just forget the basics when you have a deadline to meet. You have just solved my problem.
Cheers,
Thanks Gabi for adding your voice to the debate i do hope you had a wonderful holiday and best of wishes for the coming year i must all so take this opportunity to welcome you to my website.
Hi, Gary. I am all for the principles that you have posted here. In fact, I am coming with a new design for my website in the new year, so I can offer something better to my customers and prospects. I hope all my efforts will work out well. Thanks for this post. A lot of people will find this of great use.
Enjoy your new year.
– Wes –
Thanks Wes looking forward to your new design in the coming year i do hope you are having a wonderful holiday and best of luck to you in 2011. Thanks for your continued support.
These are Awesome Points, Thanks for haring your views in a Post, I really Appreciate your Work !!!
Thanks i am happy that you found the post useful and for taking the time to add your voice to the debate here have yourself a wonderful holiday see you again in the new year
To add more on your #3 tip… . A blogger must always create a readable articles that will help their readers not to stress their eyes in front of computer. This can be achieved with the use of short paragraphs and subheadings. Likewise, using bullet points when needed or by underlining the most significant details in your article will surely help a lot. Executing these tips might consume a lot of your time but you can be assured that your readers will appreciate it.
Thanks for adding you point a valuble one indeed as you rightly said it can be a bit time consuming but good practice makes perfect readable content is very important and to add to that we must also practise good grammer. Thanks for your input and have a wonderful holiday.
Thanks for writing such Awesome post, your really found good designing principle.
I agree with your talk that site which has a poor navigational structure is a big turn off.
All the above mentioned points for designing are really important,especially navigation of the website should be easy and clear.Great post.
1 and 4 is most important for a new website,
have a good navi struction will help your visitors find your content and service easily~
and as many of we know that , firefox and chrome are now more and more popular, so we should make sure that the website complies to web standards at http://www.w3.org!
Good tips, thanks!!!
Not only the browser and also check the monitor compatible.
I like the way you share a tip that ultimately helps you but put in a great way to explain it also helps others…
w3linker.com
Navigation structure and browser compatible are important part of design. Nice points of good design blog.
Nice description about designing.I learn lot of things about designing. Keep updating this blog. I follow this blog regularly.
Thanks,
great points, newbies ot blogging will get alot from your writing, I think that any post I write, I always try to make targeted, and fun, if the writing is hard, and insensitive to the subject, then readers get bored, its ok to have a high bounce rate on a site, if you know that the reader will end up on what they wanted in the first place, but writing boring posts, and content, then excpeting readers to read, gain interest, and follow you, just wont work
Nice post. Really informative.To successful achievement of the objectives of website designing every web designer should follow these designing principles. Thanks for sharing.
these are really good principles…but designers should know basics of seo..it will be really helpful for those. 🙂