There are a multitude of new websites published daily, so why not have one of your own out there on the World Wide Web? If you are running a small business, have something to sell, or simply have a wealth of information to share your own website could be the way to do it. People publish a website for all kinds of reasons, some just for the experience of putting together and publishing a page. But the best reason you can have for running a site is to raise awareness, whether it be of a medical condition that gets little or no attention, a charitable cause to increase funding or to make the wider population aware of your product to increase sales and revenue. A well designed and well planned site can bring all kinds of rewards as a response to your hard work in creating it.

Simplicity is the Key

If you spend a little time browsing the biggest sites on the web you will notice that they all have something in common, their designs are all consistent, the colour schemes are all easy on the eye, and you will probably find that they are not stuffed full of flashing images, animations and music that plays annoyingly in the background. Their design is simple and clean, and that is what you need to have for your own site, simple doesn’t have to mean boring, but it does mean effective. Keep your information easy to read, and keep it fresh, Make sure that you publish regular updates so that your viewers will keep coming back for more. Try and be unique with your content, try not to just regurgitate the stuff that you have seen everywhere else. While it is good to have articles and information posts about topics or debates that are trending, it is important to bring the information to the public with your own unique twist.

Keep Your Audience In Mind

While it would be nice to be able to build a site that fills every one of your aesthetic requirements, your taste is not necessarily going to be the same as that of the rest of the population. Your favorite color may not be the easiest on the eye when applied to a web page template. Your favorite font may be difficult to read for those people with low vision. Think about the style features that you are going to use and ask yourself will they work for everyone? You may love your little animated gifs that you have running around the screen, but think of those users who do not have the super fast broadband connection that you have, or those that are trying to view the web using an older model of PC – complicated graphics take a lot longer to load over slower connections and with slower processors. If your page takes too long to fully load you may find that people click away from it and go somewhere else that works better for them. Try not to do things that will lose you visitors, go for the most audience friendly design than you can.

image: Mads Bødker – CC BY 2.0