Keep Your Website Design Simple
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

When designing a website many people aren't mindfull of their audience. When you work with a high speed internet connection and all of the latest web browsers and web authoring software it's easy to forget that many people are still using dialup connections to access the internet. Many are using old computers with older web browsers. Your website may look great in the latest version of Netscape or Internet Explorer and look absolutely dreadfull in a version 4.x or 5.x browser.

I like to test my websites with a variety of web browsers. I use 2 versions of the Opera web browser, 3 versions of Netscape (one is 4.8), Internet Explorer and Firefox. You'd be surpised at how different your site may look in these different browsers. You can make adjustments in your code to make your site look better in older web browsers. It's almost impossible to have a website that looks identical in all web browsers but you can make it look fairly close if you try.

The maximum width you should be using is 780 pixels. This will fit perfectly into any monitor using a resolution of 800 x 600. The average screen resolution setting these days is 800 x 600. If you make your website 1024 pixels wide many of your visitors will need to scroll from side to side to see the entire page and this can be very annoying.

Be mindfull of file sizes of your graphics files. Keep in mind that a 100K image is large for a dialup user so don't plaster 10 of them on the same page. Use multiple pages or thumbnails to keep page loading time acceptable. Many new web authors create one very long page for their website, rather than breaking it up into multiple pages that load quickly. If you do find your images are too large try a service like Gif Wizard which can compress gifs and jpgs by as much as 50% without any noticeable loss in quality.

Use external style sheets rather than including all your style tags in the head section of your document. Text takes time to load too. It's much faster if a person's web browser reads all the font styles from an external style sheet. The overall file size of a page should be no more than 40K, not including graphics. Less is better but I like to use 40K as an upper limit. Use your file manager to find out the size of your files.

Although I use a high speed internet connection I also have a dialup connection which I use to see how quickly (or slowly) a site will load for someone using dialup. If you don't have a dialup connection try viewing your website using a friend's computer.

It may be tempting to use "cute animated gifs" but I would avoid doing this at all costs. Surfers have been bombarded with flashing banners, popups, pop unders, animated and spinning text. Keep it simple and readable. Use colors that don't clash. If your site is mostly text use a light background color with dark text so that it's easy to read. Use a font size between 8pt and 10pt for regular text. Any smaller than 8pt and nobody will be able to read it.

If you use a Flash Movie intro, always provide a link to skip the intro. Flash is nice but older browsers can't handle it and the loading time can be lengthy for dialup connections.
These suggestions are extremely important if you are trying to sell a product or service. Today's surfers have a lot of web savvy, and know what they are looking for and don't have much time to do it. You have to grab their attention in the first few seconds or they hit their back button and click the next Google search result. I am a very impatient web surfer as I spend 8 hours a day online. If you don't get my attention right away I'm gone.

Make your point right away and if you are selling a product, make sure you include ordering instructions in a highly visible spot. Always put your most important information "above the fold". This refers to the portion of your website that one can see without scrolling down. I can attest to this. On one site I had a couple of special package deals which weren't selling much. I looked at the page using a resolution of 800 x 600 and I discovered my specials were just barely below the fold. Moving them up a bit higher on the page made a huge difference in sales.

Always think of what you are trying to sell, or promote. Will people get the message, or will they have to look for it? Will they be gone before your page has loaded? Will it look okay in their web browser? Will it be hard on the eyes? Will it be annoying? You must consider all of these things if you are trying to sell something or get a message across. If you do, you will achieve greater success.

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