Questions: From your research identify, what are the “Best Web Design Practices?
ID: 3592613 • Letter: Q
Question
Questions:
From your research identify, what are the “Best Web Design Practices?” – List the Top 10 DOs for Good Web Design and l list the Top DON’Ts for Good Web Design.
From your research identify what is the “Best Navigation Web Design?” – List Top 10 Guidelines/Tips for a Good Navigation Design.
What makes a web design a good web design?
List the Top 10 Good Web Design DO Practices
List the Top 10 Good Web Design DON’T Practices
List the Top 10 Best Navigation DO Practices--Find two (2) other websites that demonstrate Good Web Design and Navigation Practices.
For each website you selected: Give the url, Print Screen the index page, Briefly state 23 good web design and navigation practices that have be
Explanation / Answer
Answer:
Your website is your first digital impression and you want to make sure it’s a great one. It should reflect everything you want potential customers to know and remember about your business. To marketers and other business owners who have been around for a while, this is nothing new. Successful businesses are always trying to improve the quality of their websites to meet the needs of their users.Often times, people are visiting your website because they are seeking out something. You want to ensure that they are finding what they are looking for quickly and with ease
navigation is key to a website's ability to attract and retain visitors. If a site's navigation is confusing, scattered or non-existent, users will never find the important content, and they will browse elsewhere.
1. MAKE NAVIGATION EASY TO FIND (VERY EASY)
Web users are impatient, and they're not going to hang around a site very long if they can't find their way around. Place the navigation where users expect to find it: either across the top horizontally, or on the left as a vertical sidebar.
This is not the place to exercise too much creativity — make sure that your viewers see your navigational elements as soon as they arrive on your site.
2. KEEP IT CONSISTENT
Similarly, place your site navigation in the same location on every page of a site. Maintain the same style, fonts and colors. This enables users to get used to a site and feel comfortable browsing it. If navigation were to jump from the top to the left, disappear, or change colors from section to section, frustrated visitors will be likely to go elsewhere.
3. BE SPECIFIC
Avoid overly generic phrases in your site navigation like “resources” and “tools” as frustrated users will be clicking on multiple links before finding what they are seeking. Stick to specific, descriptive names such as “news” and “podcasts” to avoid confusion.
Remember that website navigation and organization is a key aspect to SEO (search engine optimization).
If you want Google to find you, be specific.
4. GO MINIMALISTIC
Minimize the number of navigation links, which just leave a user with too many choices. Think how frustrating it is when you have encountered a page with dozens of links beckoning you to click. Where to go first? It's enough to send your visitor fleeing.
The most commonly recommended maximum is to include at most seven menu items. Some experts cite studies that show that people's short-term memory can retain just seven items to back this recommendation. But whatever the exact number, the take home point is that less is more.
Recently, web designers considered drop-down menus to be an alternative to too many top-level links — not so any longer. These are difficult for search engines to find, and studies have shown that web visitors find these sub-menus irritating. Even worse, visitors can end up missing primary pages if they jump to a sub-page.
5. PROVIDE CLUES AS TO A USER'S LOCATION
Once a user clicks away from the home page, be sure that you provide clues as to where they are. Use a consistent method to highlight the section a visitor is in, such as a change in color or appearance. If the site has more than one page per section, be sure that the link to return to the top of the section is clearly visible. Consider using "breadcrumbs" at the top of your page to identify exactly where in the site's hierarchy your visitor is.
Makes good web design? Below we explore the top web design principles that will make your website aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, engaging, and effective.
1. PURPOSE
Good web design always caters to the needs of the user. Are your web visitors looking for information, entertainment, some type of interaction, or to transact with your business? Each page of your website needs to have a clear purpose, and to fulfill a specific need for your website users in the most effective way possible.
2. COMMUNICATION
People on the web tend to want information quickly, so it is important to communicate clearly, and make your information easy to read and digest. Some effective tactics to include in your web design include: organising information using headlines and sub headlines, using bullet points instead of long windy sentences, and cutting the waffle.
3. TYPEFACES
In general, Sans Serif fonts such as Arial and Verdana are easier to read online (Sans Serif fonts are contemporary looking fonts without decorative finishes). The ideal font size for reading easily online is 16px and stick to a maximum of 3 typefaces in a maximum of 3 point sizes to keep your design streamlined.
4. COLOURS
A well thought out colour palette can go a long way to enhance the user experience. Complementary colours create balance and harmony. Using contrasting colours for the text and background will make reading easier on the eye. Vibrant colours create emotion and should be used sparingly (e.g. for buttons and call to actions). Last but not least, white space/ negative space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look.
5. IMAGES
A picture can speak a thousand words, and choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience. If you don’t have high quality professional photos on hand, consider purchasing stock photos to lift the look of your website. Also consider using infographics, videos and graphics as these can be much more effective at communicating than even the most well written piece of text.
6. NAVIGATION
Navigation is about how easy it is for people to take action and move around your website. Some tactics for effective navigation include a logical page hierarchy, using bread crumbs, designing clickable buttons, and following the ‘three click rule’ which means users will be able to find the information they are looking for within three clicks.
7. GRID BASED LAYOUTS
Placing content randomly on your web page can end up with a haphazard appearance that is messy. Grid based layouts arrange content into sections, columns and boxes that line up and feel balanced, which leads to a better looking website design.
8. “F” PATTERN DESIGN
Eye tracking studies have identified that people scan computer screens in an “F” pattern. Most of what people see is in the top and left of the screen and the right side of the screen is rarely seen. Rather than trying to force the viewer’s visual flow, effectively designed websites will work with a reader’s natural behaviour and display information in order of importance (left to right, and top to bottom).
9. LOAD TIME
Everybody hates a website that takes ages to load. Tips to make page load times more effective include optimising image sizes (size and scale), combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file (this reduces HTTP requests) and minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript (compressed to speed up their load time).
10: MOBILE FRIENDLY
It is now commonplace to access websites from multiple devices with multiple screen sizes, so it is important to consider if your website is mobile friendly. If your website is not mobile friendly, you can either rebuild it in a responsive layout (this means your website will adjust to different screen widths) or you can build a dedicated mobile site (a separate website optimised specifically for mobile users).
Web design is not only about how the website looks and feels but is also a lot about how it works and responds. When web designers work on a website, they incorporate not just those elements that add a visual appeal to it but also try to make it highly responsive, functional, quick and useful. In order to create a highly usable and effective website, designers follow certain principles that act as thumb rules or standard points to keep in mind.
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