Effective web design tips

Web design should be user friendly and attractive to visitors, enhancing their first impressions of a website and leading them to spend more time on it, perhaps purchasing content or sharing it with their friends on social networking sites. At Web Design Manchester, we consider great design as the corner stone of successful website.

There are many aspects involved in producing a strong web design, but here are some key features of a good webpage:

-          It loads quickly

Although you may have a high-speed internet connection, not everyone in the UK does. Figures from OFCOM's UK Fixed Broadband Map 2011 reveal around 14.8 per cent of residents and businesses receive internet access of under 2Mbps, although 39 per cent of the region has superfast internet speeds of over 24Mbps.

Even if your site looks brilliant, people will not pay any attention to it if it does not load properly. Many of the best sites have streamlined and easy-to-navigate pages and avoid unnecessary graphics, such as Google's homepage.

-          Compatibility

Many people do not have a website that can be viewed properly in all browsers and on different platforms. There are many different browsers in use at the moment and although the majority of web users have Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome, you will miss out on a sizable chunk of audience if you fail to make certain that it works properly on other popular browsers, such as Safari or Opera.

Further to this, companies are increasingly making sure their website design accommodates hand-held computers and mobile devices and their associated browsers. This emerging market is likely to become incredibly important in the immediate future and companies that fail to design their pages in a way that is compatible with this technology will be left behind.

Computers nowadays are set to a vast array of screen resolutions and you cannot expect web users to change their settings in order to visit your website. Therefore, you should design your site so it can be viewed in all resolutions.

-          Clear

Casual web users will not stay on your website if they cannot navigate it properly or find the information they were looking for and will instead close your page and search for a competitor. Failing to clearly display the products and services available on your site will reduce your custom and harm your business.

It is a good idea to use inbound linking throughout the website so visitors can easily go between pages. Menus on the side or top of the page leading to all of the different areas of the site will allow web users to easily find the information they are looking for. Areas of the page that cannot be easily accessed are likely to be missed out in comparison to other pages and you will lose out on business.

There are many other factors involved in having a successful web design and many people need to contact a professional web design company to make sure their page is going to be successful.

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