Starting a small business is no small task. As part of your small business promotion and marketing plan, you should have a plan for a website. While many new small business owners believe that creating a simple website with a handful of paragraphs on each page is sufficient, there are many more rules for web design that should be considered before publishing your site.
Here are 4 basic rules for web design that you should use for your business website.
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Easy To Read
A decade ago, it was chic and creative for personal websites and even business websites to experiment with colors for their business web design. HTML coding made it easy to assign background colors and font colors. The problem is that many websites became difficult to read due to low contrast or bright colors.
The best rule you can have for your website is to make it as easy to read as possible. Use high contrast, such as black text on white or off-white background, and assign your text at an easy-to-read size. Avoid using background and font colors that blend so much that readers have to squint. Keep text at least 11 and preferably 12 point font.
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Easy Navigation
Nothing is more frustrating to a website visitor than not being able to find what they’re looking for. As a sound website design tip, keep your navigation absolutely clear and easy. Your website navigation bar should be clear on the top or side. Use graphics like buttons or tabs to help visitors understand exactly where to click to go to another page.
If your web pages are longer and scroll down, place another navigation bar at the bottom so visitors can easily click to another page rather than having to scroll up again. If your visitors cannot easily navigate around your business web design, they will likely leave promptly.
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Consistent Theme
A theme for your business web design is of vital importance. It is your chance to make a first impression on your visitors. However, keeping your determined theme consistent throughout your website is essential to maintaining your ‘brand’ on the web.
A consistent theme simply means keeping every element of your website the same throughout. Background color, font and font size, link colors, navigation bars, columns of content, headers – all these should be the same throughout. Use helpful design tricks like cascading style sheets (CSS) to help make your business web design consistent.
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Easy to Download and Read in All Browsers
When a visitor enters your URL in their browser, your web host server sends your website information to the browser, which in turn translates the coding into the beautiful web page you have chosen. However, not all browsers are the same. That is why you should keep your web pages as small in byte size as possible. That means limiting graphics and images and compressing them for easy bandwidth, and limiting other large file size elements on your website.
Be sure your web designer creates your website to comply with most popular browsers so that all of your potential customers can see you clearly and easily.
Consider these website design tips for your business website. Using these top rules for web design will help your internet presence be more successful.
