Design a Website Layout is not an expenditure it’s an investment. Website layout plays an important role to attract more traffic to a Website. It deals the customer’s requirements instantly and effectively. Almost every websites alter their layouts to have a new and better look. And also update with advancement in technology, underlying code also changes consequently by adding new possibilities of providing a better layout. Let’s see some of the points to be consider while designing a website layout. A good website designed should make use of latest trends and functionality that can also get well ranking in search engines.
The website layout should be simple:
The website layout should be more user friendly. And do not create a complex navigational links using complex scripts or images that maynot be viewable correctly in different browsers. Also the search engines may not index the site properly if complex navigation is involved. Try to make use of the larger images in a minimal amount, because which takes much time to load. And make use of smaller icons to attract visitor’s attention.
Font size and face should be readable:
Use standard font size, so that the visitors can read the content easily. Select a professional looking font face’s and avoid using fancy fonts like Comic Sans, unless it’s a personal website. Use appropriate spacing among lines to avoid clumsiness.
Make use of the colors that are pleasing to the eyes:
The choice of colors may reflect one’s personal taste. Every webmaster or designer wants the color combination that they like most. However, it’s a wise decision to get feedback from users or friends about what they feel about the color combination of the website. So try to makeuse web safe colors whenever possible.
Keep track of the webpage dimensions:
One important aspect of layout is keeping track of dimensions of a web page. Most successful commercial websites fix the width and height of the webpage so that the important content of the webpage lies within the top 600×600 viewable area without scrolling. To avoid a horizontal scrollbar, set the page layout to expand and shrink with changes in browser window size. The best choice is to limit the width by placing a table with a fixed width of 750 or 775 pixels. The page height should not be any more than four scroll lengths. Limit the content of the page and if more content needs to be added, move it to a new web page. Provide a navigational link to the next page and a link back from the second page. This will also increase your web site’s page views.
Limit the file Size:
Webpage size is defined by the total size of text, images and supporting files that are downloaded from the server to view a webpage. Page size is very critical for high volume websites because of high bandwidth needed. However, it is also very important for any other site to keep loading times to a minimum. Most of the population on the internet use a slow 56K modem to gain access the internet. And smaller page sizes load faster.
There is a trade off among making your webpage look well with many graphics and making it faster to load. The rough target for page size should be below 35K for at least the cover page. As a general rule of thumb, a visitor will leave your site if the loading time is more than eight secs.