Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen some excellent, tasteful, aesthetically-pleasing web sites on the Internet. Colors blended artfully, information was conveyed intelligently, and the right balance of graphics and text made for a great experience overall.
But, as always, I simply must complain. You see, several years ago I started designing my own Web sites - for everything from the family businesses to personal sites with varying themes. (Ahh, I fondly remember the ’’Daily Rant’’ web site I created in 1997 - those were the days!)
Anyway, here are a few tips for my dear readers that happen to be new to Web site design. We were all new to it at some point in our lives, and we all made errors out of gross incompetence. However, I might be able to help other beginners so that their creations don’t look as tragic as some of mine used to!
1. The Clash - it’s a band, not a color scheme. If you’ve got a ’’seafoam green’’ background on your site, the ever-popular ’’burning flames on a black background’’ images won’t go with it. At all. Neither will lime green font colors. Remember, some of us still have old, out-dated video displays, and some of us have the latest and the greatest. You have to find a happy medium, because A: Some combinations will clash on any monitor and B: Some will only clash on the older - or the newer - displays. So, if there’s any way that you can ’’test’’ your color schemes on various equipment, go for it.
2. Try various viewing options. Look at your Web site with Netscape’s browser. Then view it through Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Both of these major browsers interpret certain HTML coding in different ways - for example, the ’’TABLE’’ tags will cause two entirely different things to be displayed. Some things look great with one browser, and some look great with another. Remember, we’re not all looking at your goods with the same software - try to compensate for that if you possibly can.
3. Anybody can put eight thousand image files on a Web site. You don’t have to have tons of graphics on your site to make it look good. Rather, they enhance your presentation. A graphic header often looks better than plain text, for example. Also, people want to see content - they want information, not a ton of images you downloaded from all the great sites on the Internet.
4. Speed doesn’t kill - crashing does. I’ve visited sites that were so slow due to enormous graphic files and poor site server connections that my computer crashed. Mind you, it wasn’t the fastest, newest PC in the world, but it generally keeps up. So, what good has your great-looking site done for me? Nothing - I couldn’t even get into it to see what was up. Please, try to create sites that load completely in less than one minute. Not only will your viewer’s PC be safe, but most of your visitors will maintain interest in your work instead of trying a different site with similar content.
5. Have fun. For me, designing new Web sites is a way to relax. I enjoy playing with colors and graphics, editing text and ’’raw coding’’ the HTML by hand. It’s enjoyable, and it’s something I can do which produces actual results for me. I can look at it and say ’’Yep, I did good, ’’ or ’’Oh yeah, that was a waste of time!’’ So, if you enjoy it, keep doing it. You’ll get better in time. Look at other sites that are similar to yours in order to get an idea of what the public really wants to see. Remember, you’re dealing with millions of people via the Internet: We don’t know you personally, so we won’t relate to you the same way that your best friend and next-door neighbor do.