Advice on designing a good website

Novice web designers spend a lot of time trying to get their design picture perfect as you would when designing a flyer or a poster in Microsoft Word or Publisher. This is time wasted when designing a website, because there are too many things which are outside your control. Any of which could throw your perfect design a little out, and render useless that time spent putting things in exactly the right place.

The viewer controls all of the following:

• Size of the viewing window
• Base font, font size and available fonts
• Browser used

Content is King

Spend your time devising your content. A website which is worth reading will get much more attention than one which is simply pretty to look at.

Make sure it is updated regularly, even if it is only a little. Make sure that any changes in event scheduling (location, time, date) are updated rapidly and that the change is easily spotted. This will give viewers the confidence to look at the site rather than ringing up for information. The time spent will repay.

Be consistent

If you have a preference for Arial, Times or Courier fonts, make sure your site is set up to use it for all the menus, and stick with it for your content too. Almost any visual aspect of the system can be changed, but if every page looks different you will confuse your visitors.