Building a website is pretty exciting, more so if you are a newbie, and you happen to be building your very first website. You might be tempted to be all out and give your website all the trimmings to make it nice-looking. Here’s a word of caution: too many frills on your website could cause you to lose the most important reason for the creation of the website-visitors.
Flashy pages, colorful graphics, elaborate and heavy scripts as well as bouncing animation could cause visitors to be distracted instead of being interested in the contents of your website. Creating attractively designed websites is, of course, important to create a good impression, but most webmasters overlook the most vital part of a website and that is content. Most internet surfers or browsers come to the site exclusively to get information. And these visitors will not stay for more than a few seconds because the website is slow loading due to heavy images or because of complicated animations. Visitors would surely click on the next site. For sure, you wouldn’t want that to happen.
For the benefit of your readers, you have to create pages that are clear and readable. You can do this by providing ample white space between contents. Using darker text over light background is eye-catching as well as providing ease to the reader. Choosing the fonts is equally important. You can choose from the many available fonts on the computer. For a good measure, choose a font size that is readable to all types of readers. Smaller-sized fonts could be the thing for the young generation, but older readers will appreciate bigger-sized fonts. You will be thanked by the readers if they don’t have to install new fonts just to read your content. You may want to add graphics to your website. It is important however to be certain that the graphics would enhance the site rather than distract visitors.
For your image formats, you can use the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) for drawings. This format is most suitable for black and white images. For more complex and intricate graphics and photographs, the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) is most suitable because it maintains 16 million colors most appropriate for pictures and complicated graphics.
Another important factor to consider in building your first website: browsers are generally lazy people. They just scan the page. They don’t really sit and read the content unless their attention is grabbed, and they are hooked by the keywords. Be sure to provide cues and keywords that will help the readers in their search for information. Write simple conversational sentences and avoid using jargon. Try to keep your paragraphs short to keep the readers interested.
Navigation is crucial to any website. Studies showed that left side navigation is favored by most people. Having your navigation bar on the left side of the page will provide ease to the visitor. Placing pertinent links to other sites is equally important as a lot of visitors would look for links whenever they are searching for information.
