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Web designing is not about designing the most beautiful website
One of the most common misconceptions prevailing in recent times, that has far reaching consequences, is that web designing is an easy job! There are many amongst us who believe that they have an aptitude for web designing since it doesn’t seem like a tough job at all. The fault lies in the widespread perception that web designing is all about making a website look aesthetically appealing to the net users in order to increase its saleability. So, all that a web designer has to do is design a wonderful website and keep enhancing its aesthetic appeal now and then with a few additions. This misconception is further fuelled by a number of easily accessible software tools that ‘claim’ that web designing is probably the easiest thing to do and something that you can easily manage on your own without the help of a web designer. The result is that a large number of websites are designed by amateur web designers who ignore the accessibility of the website to all the operating systems and thereby render the website inaccessible to a huge number of Internet users.
The belief that web designing is a job that can be handled by anyone is probably as blasphemous as the belief that a good artist needs no creativity to paint a masterpiece. A good web designer is a perfect combination of a creative mind with technical finesse. In my opinion, a good web designer is one who has the ability to think both like an ordinary net user who is definitely attracted by the colourful images on a website and a savvy technician who knows exactly what to put on the website for a serious net user. Here are a few pointers that I feel every web designer should pay attention to while designing a website.
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Refrain from overloading the homepage with pictures that take a lifetime to download. Many people get discouraged by websites that take a long time to download. The ideal time taken for a page to download should be around five seconds.
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Keep the website function simple by making the navigability of the website easy to follow. You wouldn’t want a visitor to be left clueless and search the page for the relevant links. They should, instead, stare him in the face.
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Be very cautious to including browser specific functions on your website as they will, in all probability, not be supported by other browsers. In fact, you should write for all browsers, as no body will have the patience or the time to view a page in another browser.
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Avoid the fonts that have the possibility of not being available on the machines of many users. Here, I am specifically talking about the fashionable fonts that are a craze with the new web designers on the block.
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If possible, provide a navigation bar on the website. This comes in really handy for the user who wouldn’t be left guessing as to which page to open to find the required information.
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If you are really keen to use plug-ins on your website, be sure that you only use the Macromedia flash plug ins as most people now have it on their computers. As for the other plug ins, there is a possibility that most of the users don’t have them on their computers.
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Use an optimum number of Meta tags on your website as the search engines rely on these for their search database. However, do not be over-enthusiastic in the use of keywords.
Web designing is not about designing the most beautiful website. It is about being easily accessible to the maximum number of users and providing them with the information that they need. While the role of aesthetics cannot be undermined, especially in the case of websites that sell products, it is definitely not the USP of every website. Design your website for the serious Internet user who needs information than for a casual surfer who is just wiling away time.
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