Web Design Best Practices

Navigation

Navigation is one of the most important elements of a web design. It guides users through the site providing them with a sense of orientation. This is done by implementing simple, intuitive main navigation and sub-navigation that is pleasing to the eye and easy to use.

Text versus Imagery

Achieving balance between plain text and imagery is key. Too many images on a page can cause it to download slowly. When imagery is used, our designers optimize them to load quickly without the risk of losing your visitors due to excessive load time.

We also use text in creative ways, such as changing font sizes and colors for headers, creating blocks of color, buttons and other elements created within the CSS coding instead of using images. This is a benefit to your overall site with regard to search engines that only look at text when indexing your site.

Colors and the Web

The use of 3-5 colors on your website is optimal. More than this can be distracting, creating an unprofessional looking presence. Main 'body' colors are used for the background complemented by a main text color. A second complementary color may be used to add visual contrast for links and/or heading text.

Compatibility

With many different existing browsers, browser versions and the continual development of new browsers and versions, compatibility is always an issue. This is especially true when a user expects the content of a website to display correctly regardless of the browser they use. Our approach is simple. We create a design in one browser and then test it extensively across other browsers. Taking this simple approach covers the issues that can arise. We are also now testing designs on the iPad to ensure consistency across most devices.