Submitted by: Michael Bryksa

Web design is a science as much as it is an art. It demands creativity and being innovative, but at the same time the process of creating and designing a website also revolves around a set of rules aimed at making web browsing a much more meaningful and streamlined experience for the visitor.

If you’re a web designer looking to go pro, you definitely need to put user experience into consideration. This is achieved by following these set of basic guidelines.

1. Pages that load fast

Every web designer out there needs to get this simple rule in their head: Internet users loath slow-loading websites. Back then you could get away with it when the norm was a phone line and a 56k modem. But nowadays with Internet speeds running at 20Mbps, if your website takes more than 10 seconds to load, you just lost the race for higher visitor traffic.

2. Accommodates different screen sizes

Technology is so far ahead that there are at least a dozen different screen sizes for monitors available. As a web designer, you need to put this into consideration.

Your job as a professional web designer is to program your website to fit all the different resolutions – 640 x 480, 1024 x 768, 1440 x 900, etc. To do this, you must learn to design a website not in terms of pixels but percentages.

3. Streamlined navigation

Easy navigation is a very important, often overlooked aspect of web design. Attracting a user to your website is one thing, getting that user to browse deeper into your website’s pages is another thing. Make sure all your links are lined up where it’s easy to spot them, and try your best not to get them all mixed up with a bunch of other texts. Also other important links should be located in the footer.

4. Compatibility with web browsers

Web browser compatibility is another issue you need to keep in mind aside from different monitor resolutions. There’s no point in making your website look good on Internet Explorer when it appears jumbled and all messed up when viewed on Mozilla Firefox, the other half of the web browser market.

5. Images hurt in packs

Images and short Flash animations can make any website look good. That’s the great thing about incorporating images to your website. But then we go back to Pointer #1 regarding slow-loading pages, and that’s exactly what images to do your website. Images make your website load very slowly and eventually turn visitors off.

The best advice is to limit your use of images and animations on your website incorporate some but not too many. Just enough to keep people interested but not too many as to make your website take ages to load a single page.

The best websites are those that makes web browsing a pleasant experience for the visitor. Remember this as a web designer. As much as designing is a free art, you need to please your audience, too, just like any other successful artist.

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Source:

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