Web Design Rules to Live By

    Your website's design can make or break your site's popularity. We've all seen websites that just sort of...suck. They look amateur, with poorly placed design elements, a confusing layout, text that is difficult to read, broken links or distracting images that take forever to load. Clutter and distraction are like kryptonite to a website. Read on to learn what Superman-like concepts of web design you should be aware of.Studies demonstrate that average web surfers spend 30 seconds evaluating a home page What's the point of sticking around a site that has a confusing design layout or pages that take forever to upload? You have literally billions of other options out there. Read on to learn about how to design a website that will appeal even to today's community of attention-deficit web surfers.

Simple Navigation

    Thanks to search engines, people go online to find exactly what they want, and their patience is extremely limited. How easy is it for visitors to find what they need in your web pages? Without a menu, users are likely to get frustrated and quickly leave your site behind in virtual dust. For example, restaurant websites get visited most often by interested customers who wish to find hours of operation; if this information is not easy to find, your potential diners will find grub elsewhere.Think about what what users will want to find once they reach your website. Menus must be clear and concise, with short, descriptive titles. If you use marketing-speak, or creative names for your links, users won't appreciate your innovation. They'll just move on to a more clearly-marked site.

Typography

    Print typography differs from web typography in a few aspects. Some fonts that look good in print are less clear on the web. Users should easily digest the content they find on your free website Make it as easy to read as possible with smart typography. Stick to fonts you can be sure visitors will have on their computers, or your website won't show up with the font you've selected. Safe bets are Arial, Courier or Courier New, Verdana and Times New Roman installed. Whatever font you choose, stick to it throughout your website. Consistency contributes to branding and can give your text a "voice".Commit to one or two fonts to include in your website. A web pagewith multiple font styles looks sloppy and unprofessional, and is unpleasant for your readers. Present readers with dark text on a light background, to create a contrast and make the text easy to read. Stick to left alignment for large sections of text. Justified text looks awful on the web.

The Value of White Space

    Pages packed with content, graphics and/or text are unattractive and uncomfortable for visitors. Leaving a little space between your elements can do wonders for your site's visual appeal. Designers refer to the empty space between design elements as whitespace, but the space doesn't need to be white. The whitespace on a page is usually the same color as the page's background. Separate text, images and menus with margins of empty space. This instantly makes your site much easier to digest. If you're using a drag and drop free website builder to build your site, adjusting the position of your elements is a breeze Don't overdo it - too much whitespace can create a negative effect, with your site appearingempty and unfinished.

Write with Perfect Grammar and Spelling

    Encountering a spelling error on a website is like a red flag indicating a lack of quality. It's unprofessional, and looks like you don't care enough to put in the effort to edit your free website . It also can seem like not that many people are interested in your free website, or you'd receive feedback by now about the mistake. Read and re-read everything you publish online. Have friends or family members take a second look at your content before you publish it. Use a word processor with a spelling and grammar checker and then copy/pastethe content to your pages.

Design for Your Market

    Unless you made a personal free website to share with friends or family, odds are the entire purpose of you deciding to make a website in the first place was so that other people will get some sort of product or service from you. So build your site for them, and not for yourself. Determine what users will expect or need from you, and present this information clearly. Good websites are designed based on envisioning visitor expectations. Most people look for simple, visually-based homepages, and sites with a high-level of contrast. A fun exercise involves learning from websites that suck, to make sure you don't commit the same design sins.