Web Design Tips

"Great artists are not first problem solvers; they are first creators, who solve problems secondarily as a necessary and inevitable result of their commitment to producing a remarkable result." C Childs in The Spirit's Terrain

There are many tips we can think of to make an amateur's web page that much better.  Be sure to browse our Meta Tips section on elephanthost.com to learn how to better build your site so that it can be found on the Internet.. 

Elehost's Top 10 Web Design Tips  

1. Graphical: For graphics with text within them, do not convert / make them JPG images, keep them GIF images. By making them JPG images, you will make the image look grainy, and not as vibrant. This is a very important part of design as it is easy to spot and looks very unprofessional. You will notice in the example below how much cleaner the GIF image is. As well every time you save a JPG you lose quality, so keep your source files!
    

   JPG	GIF

    
2. Graphical: For images, test out what works best for the smallest image possible. Some times you will find it works best to cut the image into several pieces. That way for the largest pieces you can lower the palette size to reduce the overall picture without sacrificing too much quality. Your users will thank you! Below is an example of how to save on image size by splitting 1 image into 3 pieces. The top example shows two GIF images and 1 JPG image. Combined the images are 5.4 K smaller than the 1 JPG image of comparable quality. Even then, we still have clearer text on the JPG files: the text is not nearly as washed out. As shown in "Tip#1", use GIF for Text images and JPG for photos.
    

   1 (GIF)	2 (JPG)	3 (GIF)
   1 JPG image below is 5.4 K bigger then the 2 GIF and 1 JPG images above. As well, the text in the JPG below is not as clear.
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3. Promotion: Designing your web site to be found on the Internet takes a little practice and patience. As it often will take up to several months to see if the changes you made altered you positions in the search engines, it is important to learn a little about your audience and how they will find you on the Internet. We have designed a useful section on our ElephantHost.com web site to help guide you with "META TIPS".
    
4. Navigation: Many web sites make it difficult for their audience to contact them if they have a question. We think that the "Contact Us" page should not be the only place you put phone number and e-mail address. To be customer-centric, you need to make your site that way. By putting your phone number and e-mail address at the bottom of every page, you will make it very easy for customers to call you if they have any questions.
   
5. Screen Resolution: As the average monitor size and screen resolution of people viewing web pages increases, we have seen many web sites start catering to the 800x600 screen size (instead of the old standby 640x480). However, it is crucial to make your site as friendly as possible. If a person using 640x480 visits a site designed for a larger resolution, then they will have to scroll a lot to see what is on the right side of the screen. Please be user friendly! If you design a site that is not for 640x480 users, at least keep your navigation and content segmented so they do not have to scroll to read the body of the text. A great example of this user friendly approach is our web site. Try it out in 640x480 to see what we mean (In your control panel, choose Display - Settings - Screen Area).
   
6. Content: In order to build a useful web site, it is critical to offer your audience a value added experience. This often involves giving them FREE information that they can use. For many web sites this can be in the form of an information / educational area in your area of expertise. A great example of this is the section you are reading right now. We hope that you find this advice helpful.
    
7. Layout: It is important to make your web site as user friendly as possible. After all, your competition's site is only a mouse click away; the easier your site is to work with, the more utility it will provide to your audience. An easy way to ensure your site works for your viewers, is to offer Site Navigation in both graphical and text formats. You will find that the easier it is to move around your site, the more useful it will become.
     
8. Layout: Do not use too many different fonts on one page unless that is what you are selling. The overall impression of the site needs to be reviewed from time to time to make sure your layout is effectively conveying your message. If you are distracting your viewers with to many alternate fonts and sizes, the less they will take from your page. It is a good idea to decide on who your target audience is and then design the site for how it will appear on their computers (not necessarily yours).
    
9. Browsers: No, we are not talking about browsing elephants. As the number of people using a Netscape browser is still quite large, it is very important to test your web site in both browsers. A good example of a problem that happens in Netscape's browsers but not in IE is the repeating background problem. If you insert a background picture on your page, it will repeat when viewed in Netscape. If you put a table within a table and assign a background to the outside table, it will also assign that background to the interior table. To get around this you have to assign a background for the interior table with its own image. Problem solved.
    

   See how the interior table repeats the background in Netscape? You can avoid this by assigning a background to the interior table.

    

10. Page Size: Despite the fact that more people are getting connected with DSL / Cable, it is still important to consider the users who have slower connections. As a general rule, it is not a good idea to have your main page larger than 50K unless it can be helped. This is always a tough decision to make. At the very least ensure you have optimized your images to reduce the size as much as possible. This part of the job is a balancing act so enjoy the challenge.