Improve Your Website

Improve Your Website

 1

Balance your page. To improve your website, balance your page because when users enter a website, their focus first starts at the top left of the page and hovers there before slowly tracking to the right. The web user is focused more on the text of the page, rather than images or graphics. This is where balance comes into place.

o    Balance will not only make your page more visually appealing, but it will make your page easier to read and items easier to find. A good object will help the objects on your page flow.

o    Keeping it simple. If you clean your website up by removing all the unnecessary visual elements, it will allow important items to stand out. You should leave some white space on the page so the illusion of the space is visually pleasing, as well as easier to navigate.

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Clean backgrounds. The background textures and colour you chose have the ability to estimate the overall appeal of the website. Lots of texture and graphics in the background can be distracting, and the more texture you add to the background, the less noticeable your text and images become. If you are going to use a colour on the background, you should make sure there is significant contrast between the background colour and the text. You will rarely go wrong with black text and white background because it’s clean and easy to read. You have to be careful when using brighter and darker colours such as red or yellow. They cause visual fatigue (temporary loss of strength and energy resulting from hard physical or mental work) and the reader will lose their focus on the text.

 3

For easy navigation, you should create a toolbar with links that are easy to navigate and position the toolbar in an area that makes sense. Web users often look for the toolbar across the top or down the left the left hand side of the page. You shouldn’t forget a link to your homepage. It’s often forgotten but very important to point your users to your homepage.

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Text readability should make your pages easy to read, break up blocks of text and create short paragraphs. You should consider the key points on each page and create headings and subheadings use one or two fonts. You should select one font for your headings and subheadings and another for the body text and highlight key words and phrases by bolding or using a different colour. You should be careful when selecting colours, and not to use every colour in the rainbow. Many such as yellow and pink don’t stand out well if you’ve selected a white or black background.

       5

Horizontal Scrolling. It would be better if you get rid of horizontal scrolling because users hate to scroll left to right. It's disorienting and annoying, so if you've got it, lose it. Vertical scrolling is ok if you have to have it, but consider moving larger blocks of information to another page and providing links. There's also the danger of missing vital information that falls below the screen if a user decides not to scroll down to view it. So if you’ve got to have a scrolling page, try to keep all your important information above the fold.

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Make it quick. We all get impatient when it takes more than 5 seconds to connect to a website. Users want to make contact, and make it quick. You need to ensure that your pages load as quickly as possible. Eliminate unnecessary graphics, especially flash graphics they can be time hogs.