Eric Ollenburg

Hot tips for both beautiful and functional website design.

When it comes to website design, whether doing it yourself or hiring someone, creating a website correctly right from the start is ever so important. Keep these things in mind and hopefully these website design tips will save a lot of time and / or money:

• CONTENT - Be sure to always include html links and text in your website design so the Search Engines know what your website is about people can find you.
• SPLASH PAGE -
• Incorporate it into the website design of your index page so the Search Engines can index your website.
• Make it short! No one wants to site through more than ten to fifteen seconds - you will loose peoples attention and annoy others. Bigger and shorter is best.
• Change it up - have a website design splash that randomly chooses from five different versions.
• Make a splash page that a visitor can "skip forever" that utilizes javascript cookies to remember the splash page preference.
• INTENDED AUDIENCE
• If it's more mature professionals, the website design can still be a little fun here and there but keep it very structured with a lot of information spread out over the entire page either with links or small bodies of text and links. Professionals don't like stuffy, they just like it quick and proficient.
• If it's young and hip, make the website design fun with games, little adventures, subtle Easter Egg Links for a visitor to stumble across. Also incorporate audio, video, sideshow, etc. into the website design.
• POINTLESS DESIGN - avoid placing swf flash movies and big, slow loading images in the website design just for flare if they don't direct the visitor to important areas of the website. It will just slow down your page loading speed, lower your Search Engine Ranking and frustrate your visitors.
• IMAGE USE - Website design background images and link images should be done with css, not imbedded in the page. Website design images like a picture of the person an article is about or icons to break up text bodies in imbed into the page to be part of the un-styled code.
• CLEAN AND SIMPLE - It's better to have a website design that's easy to navigate a little light with content that's spread out and very keyword rich than a cluttered web site chocked full of walls of text.
• NAVIGATION: K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid; you want your website design to be easy to use - but not so easy to use even an idiot could use it...you may end up with only idiots using it. }:)
• FLASH MOVIE PAGE TOP AND NAVIGATION - Be sure to have it change the actual html page and have the full website navigation and a site map in the footer so the Search Engine Crawlers can index your website. This way you can still have the beautiful Flash movie navigation in your website design and still satisfy those hungry Search Engine robots appetite for content.