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Making sure your website design doesn't suck

An exceptional website is not as hard as you might think to create. Knowing what your trying to accomplish and staying focused is very important. It will help keep the site concise and more manageable.

If the website say, for example, allows users to download a super important PDF file, then it should do it well. It should do it over and over again without fail. It should also be easy for the visitor to figure out how to perform their part of the task. This may sound like the obvious, but all to often I go to a site that has the potential to be a great one, but then they drop the ball at the crucial moment. So, test, test, and test some more.

The Information Architecture (IA) is possibly one of the most critical areas of the design of a site. The IA is basically how the site will be laid out, and how the visitor will be asked to navigate it. How will the navigation links be displayed? What resources should be placed on the index home page versus secondary pages? When a visitor comes to the site what are they looking for and how easy is it to find? When you are visiting a truly exceptional website, you never think about these questions. You simply look for a moment, then flow to where you want to be next. That is what great IA is about.

The style and aesthetics of the website will have a lot to do with how well you connect emotionally with your visitors. Excellent sites know their audience and are designed accordingly. You wouldn't do an ultra modern theme with techno music for a deli, and you wouldn't do a grunge style website for a fortune 500 company. High valued sites make their visitors feel comfortable and in their element.

I like Flash and video, and use them often. However, if they adversely effective the load time of your main pages then something is wrong. Excellent websites should have excellent load times. There is nothing wrong with using Flash animation, just make sure it loads in the background and doesn't keep the visitor waiting. This is a basic concept taught in beginning website design classes around the world, but more often than naught the temptation to put that cool video on the home page is just too great. Don't do it. Don't lose your visitor before they even get to see your website. Keep your load times down.

That content is king is a clich, but it still holds true. If you have unbelievably hot unique content, then your website is going to be unbelievably hot and popular. It should be valid, relevant, and easy to access. Exceptional content is at the heart of every exceptional website.

While quality content is king, it isn't quality unless it is current. Content that was hot last year probably isn't even warm anymore. Keeping a website up-to-date is vital to making sure your content is indeed quality and relevant. Keep it fresh and people will eat it.

Making sure your visitor's time at your website is as safe from hackers and criminal elements as possible is vital to any website. There is no doubting that your website sucks if someone gets their identity stolen while visiting. This can mean spending some money and making recommended changes to otherwise working code, but it has to be done. Security for your website and the people that visit it is critical. Call in the experts and play it safe.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

About the author: Dustin Dickens is a professional website designer living and working on the South coast of Spain. Check out Dustin's free report on how to make sure your business website design doesn't suck! Get your own completely unique content version of this article.

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