If you want to impress your website visitors with your professionalism, you have to start with quality web design. First time visitors to your site will notice the design before anything else, such as what you’re selling or any informative articles you may have. So let’s look at some simple ways you can design your website so that people who visit will be impressed rather than turned off.
Make Best Use of 404 Pages: People reach 404 pages when they type in something incorrectly in trying to find something on your site. Now, what does this have to do with effective web designing? The relevance is that when a prospect reaches your 404 page, he or she is likely to click away and never find your active pages. It’s not very difficult to create a custom 404 page that doesn’t just tell visitors that the page doesn’t exist, but gives them the option to land on your actual site. The number of visitors you can lose to a 404 page can add up over time, and many people who end up there don’t realize they made a mistake and will think your site is broken. Your customized 404 page can be straightforward, humorous or however you prefer, but make sure visitors can easily return to your website from there. It really is kind of hard to go wrong with a web design that is simple but gets the job done very well. The opposite is very unattractive to many people, and it can make people frustrated trying to use it. You have to ensure that whatever you do, the design should be minimalistic in nature and there shouldn’t be anything unnecessary. There are no absolutes with this one because we have seen great sites that were not really simple. Even when you’re using ads, ensure that it doesn’t look crowded, because that would only work against you. You can surf around and find excellent examples of all kinds of sites, so you can get some ideas.
Avoid going overboard with your design prowess to the detriment of properly displaying your content. A site that makes heavy use of Flash animation always makes us think the designer, or the webmaster, is just trying to impress people. If you want to use Flash, then you have to think about the purpose of the site and who your audience is.
Then there is the issue of heavy files and page loading times that can be adversely affected by Flash. If you really do want to use flash on your homepage, then make sure you have a link to an individual HTML page where your content is listed out. This gives others the option to visit a non-flash page if they’re not in favor of it.
It all depends on your reason for wanting to learn website design, but the online marketer needs to know about these points. If you do not need to be completely knowledgeable, then stick to the points that impact usability, SEO, etc.