Good web design
Keep it neat and tidy
Be consistent
Make sure that the text on every page of your website is consistent in size and colour.
Create your own set of design "guidelines" and stick to them. For example, you may decide that all headings on your website will be font size 14 in black, and all normal text will be font size 12 in grey. Make sure your font is easily legible.
For example, Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman are used almost exclusively on web pages throughout the Internet. These fonts can be guaranteed to appear on all computers. If you were to pick a font that was not on the computer of a visitor to your website, your text would not be visible to them. Choosing hard to read script fonts, such as MS Script (MS Script in case you can't read this!) should be avoided.
Choose your colours carefully
You might think that a technicolour website looks great, but a lot of your visitors won't agree. As you are learning to build your website you may get carried away and use a variety of different colours on each web page, however this is not recommended.
Try to use neutral colours and imagery as much as possible. Choosing the right colours is similar to decorating a house. Certain colours that work offscreen often work equally well on-screen. Bear in mind that around 10% of us suffer from colour blindness with varying degrees of severity. Colours with high contrast e.g. black on white are therefore recommended. Red on green would be a bad choice as they both have the same levels of contrast and would be virtually indistinguishable to someone suffering from colour blindness.
It is recommended that you choose background colours that are neutral and easy on the eye. Avoid using complicated pictures, photos or artwork as the basis of your web page background as this could make your website look messy. Choose something simple and neutral, which is complimentary to your subject matter. The same applies for your header. Again, avoid using a photo on your header unless it is minimal and/or sparse in nature.
Plan ahead
Before you get started, it is a good idea to sit down and plan how you want your website to be organised. Instead of creating 50 separate pages with small pieces of content on each one, you could condense this content into 10 or 20 pages. This will give you lots of room to develop your website later on.
Break up your pages
It is easy to completely fill up a web page with text. As informative as this text may be, visitors to your website may be overwhelmed by it and as a result may skip over this page completely.
It is recommended that you break up any heavy pieces of text with some images, headings and paragraphs. This will make your page a lot easier to digest and encourage visitors to your site to read through the information. Remember, web page visitors tend to "browse" rather than "read".
Don't leave empty pages
When you begin creating your website there is no need to select 50 pages straight away. Adding lots of pages in one go will make your site look unfinished and unprofessional. Only add pages when you need them and never leave blank pages showing as "Empty".
Walk before you run
It is easy to get carried away and create an overly ambitious site which may end up looking complicated and confusing. It is recommended that you start creating your website in ‘Simple Mode' then later, when you are feeling more confident, move to ‘Creative mode' (see Page 19).
Too often people start in ‘Creative mode' without properly digesting this manual and then become frustrated. Glancing over this manual is strongly recommended and will save you hours in the long run.
Resize your photographs first
When you insert photos into your web pages it always pays to resize them first. These days, digital cameras are such high quality that a single photograph would require 3 or 4 computer screens to display it at its natural size.
Imagine how big that photo would be if you printed it out! It will take a huge amount of time for visitors to your website to download such a photo and it will eat up a huge amount of your web space, requiring you to upgrade sooner. Resize your photos using your favourite image editing package. A lot of cameras come with a cut down version of the popular paint programme Photoshop, however you may prefer to use another package. One package Mr Site recommends is Google's Picassa, available for free from http://picasa.google.com. Please bear in mind that Mr Site cannot offer support for these packages.
Test, test and test your shop again
Test your Shop after making any changes to it, however small. It is easy to accidentally remove some crucial information when editing your Shop.
After every change, perform a ‘dry run' on your cart by visiting your site and going through the motions of purchasing a product. Of course you don't have to complete the purchase, but testing right up to the ‘Pay Now' point is recommended. If you get that far then you can be confident that everything is in order.
Try to use outlook express instead of your webmail
Use your Mr Site email address instead of your "free" hotmail, yahoo or gmail account as it looks far more professional and can help you stand out from the crowd.
Your Mr Site email address comes with Webmail which allows you to check your email when you are on the road. At the office, however, it is recommended that you set up your Mr Site email account in a mail package such as Outlook Express (which is included free with Windows) so that you can take advantage of it's many excellent features such as mail sorting, spam filtering, calendars, reminders and much more.
