Five great website design ideas

A good homepage

If you are marketing through your site, do not be tempted to clutter the homepage with too many offers. The best homepage is simple and has maybe one or two latest offers, but is definitely uncluttered. Also, a cool homepage is not necessarily a good idea.

A simple navigation

Visitors want information and navigating through a site is how they get it. Navigation is not the main thing and therefore, should be kept simple. Otherwise, it can be annoying.

Unfortunately, some 'home-made' websites are unorganised. Granted, some of these sites are lovingly 'hand-made' and full of good information from someone (who is also the webmaster) who has actually done it.

However, they just need to tidy up the navigation (linkage) to make it more sensible as well as practical. Additionally, having breadcrumb links is helpful for visitors and search engines alike.

A standard navigation

It is good to be unique. It is also good when visitors know what to expect from one site to another. Many software programmes simulate Microsoft office programmes so that users can use them intuitively and spend time on their actual work rather than figuring out the features.

Likewise, a site navigation should be standardised so that visitors do not waste time checking out which link is clicked on and which is not.

Image loading time

Some sites, especially blogs, tend to have many images. This is not a problem unless many of the images that happen to reside on a single (long) webpage takes long to load. You may want to dedicate these images to a website gallery instead.

Advertising in its place

Advertising is not a good or bad thing. The point is that it should not distract people's attention as it is not the main thing. This is especially true for animated images. Hence, you will need to be considerate in the size and placement of an ad.