The design of your website can make or break your site’s popularity.

When you wander into the [wastelandof a poorly designed site, you're likely to cringe, press your Back button and never return|We’ve all seen websites that just sort of…suck. They seemamateur, with poorly placed design elements, a confusing layout, text that is difficult to read,links that don’t work or distracting images that take forever to load.

Clutter and distraction are like kryptonite to a website. Read on to learn what Superman-like concepts of web design you should be aware of.|It's been shown that average web surfers spend 30 seconds evaluating a home page What’s the point of sticking around a site that has a confusing design layout or pages that take forever to upload? You have literally billions of other options out there.

Read on to learn about how to design a website that will appeal even to today’s[generation of attention-deficit web surfers. Clear Navigation A lot of web designers don't perform tests to see how user-friendly their site is.

How easy is it for visitors to find what they need in your website? Without a menu, users are likely to get [fed up and quickly leave your site behind in virtual dust.

People usually visit restaurant websites when they wish to find hours of operation; if this information is buried deep within your site, your potential diners will find grub elsewhere.Think about what what users will want to find once they reach your website as intuitive as possible with prominently positioned menus linking to pages with the information one would expect to find]. Menus must be quick and easy to read, with short, descriptive titles.

If you use marketing-speak, or creative labels for yourlinks, users won’t appreciate your humor. They’ll be too busy checking out a more user-friendly site. site.] The Art of Typography Typography is the [art of arrangingtype and type design.

This includes the font, size and arrangement of your website’s text.|Print typography differs from web typography in a few aspects. Some fonts that are easy to read in print are less clear on the web.Users should easily digest the content they find on your free website Make it as easy to read as possible with smart typography. Stick to fonts you can be sure visitors will have on their computers, or your website won’t show up with the font you’ve selected.

You’re safe to assume that your visitors have Arial, Courier or Courier New, Verdana and Times New Roman installed. Whatever font you choose, stick to it throughout your website. Consistency contributes to branding and can give your text a “voice”. one or two fonts to include in your site.Textwith multiple font styles looks sloppy and unprofessional, and will probably give readers a headache

Dark text on a white background makes for optimal readability. Stick to left alignment for large sections of text. Justified text looks awful on the web. Letting Your Site Breathe

Web pages stuffed with several sections of text or graphics are overwhelming and off-putting for visitors. Leaving a little space between your elements can do wonders for your site’s visual appeal. Designers refer to the empty space between design elements as whitespace, but the space doesn’t necessarily have to be white.

Usually, a page’s whitespace is the same color as the page’s background. Separate text, images and menus with margins of empty space. This instantly makes your site more readable and attractive. If you’re using a drag and drop website builder to build your site, adjusting the position of your elements is a breeze enable you to move around your site’s design elements simply by clicking and dragging them – saving you coding time|Easily adjust the positions of your page’s design elements with the help of an online website builder that has a drag and drop interface.

leave a site lookingempty and unfinished|But exercise caution and don’t go overboard – if you have too much whitespace your site will seem empty. Optimize Page Load Time Don’t forget that not all of your visitors will have high-speed internet. There are many things you can do to reduce the loading time of your pages, but the golden rule of design can be applied here: stick to the basics.

Trim the fat, like multiple animation files on the same page or even sound filesDon’t [set your site to automatically go to full screen in a website browser, as this is consideredobnoxious and intrusive|Also make sure your site does not open in full screen mode inside web browsers. This is interpreted as narcissistic Correct Spelling and Grammar Discovering a spelling or grammar error on a website is like a red flag indicating a lack of credibility. It’s unprofessional, and looks like you don’t care enough to put in the effort to edit your free website carelessspelling mistakes on a free website, the site instantly appears amateur and sloppy – terrible attributes for a small business to project. It also seems like not enough people are interested in your free website, or you’d receive feedback by now about the mistake.

Read and re-read everything you publish online. Send it to friends or family to have extra sets of eyes get a look at it. Try writing in a word processor with a grammar and spell checker and thentransferthe words to your pages.

Cater to Your Visitors Unless you’re creating a personal free website to share with friends or family, odds are the entire purpose of you deciding to make a website in the first place was so that other people will get some sort of product or service from you. Create your website for your visitors – not for yourself. How will you solve your user’s problems?.

Try to put yourself in your visitors’ virtual shoes. Most peopleare attracted to simple, visually-based homepages, and sites with a high-level of contrast. A fun exercise involves learning from websites that suck, to make sure you don’t commit the same design sins.

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