Advanced Web Design

The principles of advanced website design

Everyone surfing the net these days wants information to become available at the click of the mouse. Irrespective of Internet speed, users want pages to download quickly and expect to find solutions just by a mouse click. Keeping this in view you need to understand that you must make the home page of your website your point of sale. Viewing your homepage in this light, you must ask your self if it lucidly explains whatever you have on offer and also see that it provides easy links to pages containing detailed information about the product(s).

When you have an array of products to offer, the best among the lot needs display on the first page. However, you must be careful not to create an information overload by giving a lot of information on the first page, as it may tend to confuse your visitor. It is also important that you avoid including flash intros, as they tend to slow down downloading. People using the Internet have very little patience these days and are less likely to visit your site if they have to wait for a long time for the page to open. So, some choose to skip using flash - at least on the home page.

The structure of your web page design is the all-important part that requires your special attention. You must make sure that structuring your site is aimed only at one goal i.e. holding your visitor on the site as long as possible and leading him from the home page, which is the presale point, to the different pages of your site which represent the sale points.

Avoid a complicated structure for your website keeping everything as simple as possible. Segregate the vitals into a 1-2-3 style. Let 1 be the homepage providing basic informational details/benefits about the products you have on offer. Make 2 the elaborate details page where the visitor will find everything about the service/product, pricing, benefits etc. Page 3 is where the visitor will place his order in the 'add to cart' or through the 'contact' us part of the page.

When you have a business site on the Internet it is not advisable to play around with navigation. The best way is to provide convenient navigation keeping everything as simple as possible. For long pages, you must always ensure adding the menu at the end of the page also so that it saves the visitor the trouble of scrolling to the very top again if he wants to access the menu.

You are mistaken if you think that visitors read all the content of a page. They just scan the contents searching information on your company, what it offers, the prices, and way that they may contact you should they feel the need. This makes the quality of your content very important. Quality content is what will convert your visitor into a buyer. The text is not required to be very long however, what it says and how is what is most important.

Use graphics intelligently on your website. The purpose of graphics should be to emphasize benefits related to the product/services you are offering. Placing graphics simply because they are good looking but unrelated to what the site is about should be avoided.