What You Should Do When Building Your Website

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about what to avoid when having your website.  Today, I’m going to add to that and talk about what design guidelines should be followed when having your site developed.

Leave the color of your links alone – The default color of an unvisited website link is blue.  Let’s say you clicked on the link and then went back to the previous page.  That blue link would now be purple.  The reason why the link is purple now is to let you know that you’ve already clicked on the link.  When having your site designed, leave these colors alone.  If you must tamper with the link colors, be sure to make the visited links a distinctly different color than your unvisited links.  Taking this away can lead to some navigation problems for your visitor.

Keep your design consistent – Your pages on your site should have a similar theme.  Keeping the page design consistent will let your visitors know that they are still on your site.  If your main navigational menu is on the top of the website, keep it there on the rest of the pages.  You don’t want to confuse your visitors with different designs for every page.

Use heading text on every page – The heading text should be positioned right above the main content on every page.  This will let your visitors know which page they are visiting on your site.

Display your contact information on every page – Your visitors want information fast and if they have problems finding your contact information, you may lose some business as a result of this.  Common places for your contact information would be at the bottom of all of the pages, on the side, or on the top in the header.

There will be more information to come soon!