Principles of Designing a Website

This article was originally posted on http://www.jakeculpmedia.com

In designing a websites, many web designers normally follow a set of principles on how to properly design a website. According to many Web design Philippines experts, the standards of designing a website have introduced a number of changes compared to the practices in the past, such as assuring a website’s accessibility and usability through its designs. 

So what are these principles or practices that web designers follow in today’s modern trends in designing a website? 

Neatly Designed Navigation 

The navigation is an integral part of every websites. It is used to assist visitors to navigate through the website without having to scroll down or look of an appropriate link to point them on the page they are looking for. 

However, the navigation bar should also be designed as simple as possible. It should be easily used by any visitors, experienced or not. This can be designed with a drop down menu, normally to provide a quick way to get to a specific page under the same category, or just a simple link to another page. Using of Flash may help to beautify the navigation, but many experts suggest to only use simple animations, such as through the use of CSS or JavaScript. 

Simple Layout 

The goal of designing a website, according to many Web design Philippines experts, is to help visitors get to their goal as much as possible. Try to minimize the use of images or Flash animations to not distract visitors. Medium length content as well as the use of header tags on titles is also required to assist visitors to quickly search for their information. 

Using Pure CSS 

The use of CSS have become an integral part of designing a website, and the use of tables have steadily declined in today’s modern web designing practices. Other than for tables, the use of CSS have also replaced the use of Flash for simple animations such button animations. 

Faster Load Time

The reason why CSS became a standard in website development and design is because of its bandwidth saving capabilities compared to the use of tables. However, there are also other reasons why many websites today load slower compared to others. 

One reason that affects the speed of websites is the use of Flash movies on their websites, which significantly takes a lot of bandwidth. The use of high-resolution images is also one of the cause. Another the use of too much codes, such as the heavy use of JavaScript. 

Browser Compatibility 

This is important because not all users only use Firefox nor Internet Explorer as their main browser. In today’s trends, websites should be 90% compatible to all types of browsers available in the market, particularly in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. And because of the growth of mobile browsing, websites should as be as compatible to mobile browsers as much as possible. 

Website Scalability 

Websites should be able to re-size itself in any type of screen resolutions. According to many Web design Philippines experts, this is normally achieved through the use of CSS. 

Comments

[Michael Pitt]

Well, I'm going to split my comment into 2 parts, first a bad part, then the good part to make up for the bad part.

First, You do need to realize that your site runs off of square space. So being a web designer, I kinda lose respect for your post, seeing you don't actually code all the html, css, and php.

Second, I do like how the post is written. I think it's a great tool for beginners. I think pretty much everything you said was true.

Well, thanks for reading the comment.