What is a Really Bad Looking Website?

Perhaps the best way to approach website design is to see some examples of really bad sites. A site that is dedicated to this topic is Web Pages That Suck!

A crass name for a site to be sure, but it does get to the point, showing how many absolutely awful sites there are out there. They also have a really nice and succinct definition of good design which is quoted below.

“Web design is an art. Great web design occurs when design and content are seamless and you don’t notice its greatness. With great web design, it’s easy to find the information you need. The content makes you want to return again and again and, most importantly, great design gives credibility to the company/organization.”

Basic Web Page Construction

It is not by chance that well over 90% of websites put their logo in the upper left hand corner, and this is the first place that you want your visitor’s eyes to be drawn. From there, the eyes tend to scan along the top to the top right of your website where your visitor should begin to see what it is you have to offer or where they can reach you.

The beginning or headline of the main content should be the next place the visitor is drawn, and should be interesting enough for them to continue. If not, they simply may not go any further. Most of the important information that you want to convey is located “above the fold” which simply means the top half of the site.

Constructing the Page With CSS

Using tables to layout your site is a quick and easy way to give your site some structure, but the table construction doesn’t always render your site the way you intended, and for this reason, most designers no longer use tables for structure. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is and has been the preferred way to render your websites for a number of years.

The information that conveys how your website will be displayed is maintained in a css file that is separate from the rest of your code. For this reason, you can set up a website that completely changes it’s look, layout and color scheme with one click of your mouse. One line of code will simply tell your browser to display the look of text.css (your css file) to text2.css (an alternative css file.

Color Schemes For Your Site

If you are color challenged, don’t fret. Sites like Color Combos will give you examples of color schemes as well as the hexadecimal number code for these colors. This site was developed with WordPress, but it was a theme and color scheme generated through a website called Artisteer.

Standards Compliance

Suffice it to say, your company’s website should follow acceptable best practices for website construction, design and accessibility. These practices are set forth in the World Wide Consortium (WC3).

Making a Web site accessible is critical to your companies success. It broadens your potential audience and makes it much more usable for everyone and some level of accessibility is also required by law in a growing number of countries.

Hopefully, you will find these ideas beneficial to designing your next website. For more information, please go to Atlanta Web Pros website. If you have an industrial company, please see Industrial Web Pros.