To create a cool website design, there are several important things to consider. The website has to have a perfect balance between several important elements, which are: appearance, functionality and usability. Considering these elements, here are some principles you can implement to your website’s makeup to achieve a cool website design.
Appearance
When people browse online, the very first thing they notice as they land on a website is its aesthetics or its appearance. For this reason, web designers often spend more effort on developing the website’s visual aspect and often end up overdoing it. Appearance may be confused as being the primary element in cool website design, when that is just not the case.
One of the consequences of having too many graphics is to make a web page look cramped and confusing. Although images are effective visual tools, displaying dozens of them on a bad layout is a perfect invitation for disaster. Visitors might have a hard time finding what they are looking for or even to determine what the website is about. A good principle to follow when considering the appearance of a cool website design is to keep the layout and appearance neat and simple.
Functionality
Another reason to keep the graphic content of your website neat and simple is that too many and/or complicated graphics can compromise the loading speed or functionality of each page. Although many people have the convenience of a DSL or cable connection, there are who don’t have the convenience of lightning speed internet just yet. A single page can take minutes to load if heavily loaded with images and visual effects. This can result in the loss of potential visitors and possibly sales if this is a business website.
Much of the functionality of cool website design lies in the hands of the web designer and programmer. There are tools that they can utilize in form processing, content management and other such programs to make the performance of the website as interactive as possible.
Usability
One of the reasons why some websites don’t meet their full potential despite good appearance, content and product is because they lack an important element – usability. Although visual appearance is certainly important to a cool website design; the website design also needs to be simple enough to navigate even for first-time users.
Creating a user-friendly website is all about the viewer’s ability to use the website tools that are being presented. The layout is important and there are different website layouts for different website purposes. A layout for a commercial website is probably different from a personal website; and commercial and personal website layouts are different than an organization’s website. Designing the layout to be user-friendly relies a great deal on the ability of the web designer to make the site lead a visitor to the optimal ‘purchase’ page that functions easily and correctly.
One way of achieving a cool website design is to simplify the site’s usability with a navigation menu available on each page of the website. This keeps visitors from getting lost after leaving the main page. It can also increase browsing convenience since visitors won’t need to use the back button to a page with a menu.
The placement of the navigation menu is also very important to a cool website design. Most visitors look for the navigation menu to be located below the header or on the left panel of the page. Keeping the navigation menu at these locations can greatly improve the site’s usability.
If these three elements are fully utilized on a website, you will have created a good-looking, functional and usable website that integrates together into a cool website design.
Chris Hunter is an expert Web Designer and Internet Marketer and runs a blog about Internet Marketing techniques. You can also go to his website that is all about Houston Web Design.