Tips and tricks on effective web design
The Number 1 rule that every web designer should follow is to create a fast loading web site. You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While designing a web site always think about how long it will take to load. Try out our tips to build a great looking web site that also loads fast.
Minimize the use of images - The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don't make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. Notice the popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon etc., they have very few images because the load time is more important. Very often simple designs are the best.
Optimize images for the web - Once you have decided on the images that you need on your site, make sure that it is optimized for the web. They should be in the gif or jpeg format. You can also minimize the size of the image by choosing the number of colors you need, from the color palette. The less the colors you choose, the less the size of the image. You can also use online tools like Gif Wizard to optimize your images or to get a recommendation on how to cut down the size of an image.
Use Tables creatively - You can get some great looking designs by using tables creatively . Tables load very fast because it is just HTML code. Tables can be used in the homepage, menus or anywhere you like. Check out our homepage and our menus to see how we have used tables in our site.
Read more on Using HTML Tables Creatively
Cut down the use of animated gifs - Don't use animated gifs unless it is necessary. Animated gifs take a long time to load and can also be very irritating. But since they catch your attention you could use small animated gifs to draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site.
Design simple icons - Instead of using big, bulky images use simple and small icons that add a little color and draw the attention of a visitor. We have used small icons in our homepage to highlight the main sections of our site.
Use background images instead of big images whenever possible - Use background images whenever possible. This is usually a very useful tip for headers and footers. Instead of using an image of width 580 which is a uniform design you can use just a part of that as a background fill. This reduces the size of the web page as the image is small. The code will look like this :
Try out CSS Styles - Have fun with CSS styles to get some cool text effects. Again, a CSS Style is simple HTML code so it loads very fast. You can create cool rollovers using CSS Styles.
Rollover the text on the right menu to see how we have used CSS Styles to get a simple but nice text effect.
Check out our CSS Styles tutorial for more cool tips on CSS Styles
Use Flash sparingly - There seems to be a lot of hype about Flash but I recommend that you minimize the use of Flash on a site. Don't make entire sites using Flash. It may look great but it takes hours to load and can really put off visitors. If you do want to use Flash use it within an HTML site and make sure it loads fast.
Design most of your site in HTML - As much as possible try to design your site using HTML. You can create great designs by just using HTML code. Use tables, CSS Styles and simple fonts to design your site. Minimize the use of animated gifs, Flash, bulky images etc.
Keep checking your load time - Last but not least, before you decide on the final design of your web site, check its load time on NetMechanic. This site gives you a free analysis of your web site which is extremely useful. We kept using it to improve our site till we got a report that said good loading time!
Web Design Ideas
Take a look at a variety of ready-made website templates to get some great web design ideas!
Here are some cool web design ideas you can use while designing your next web site. These are some ideas that we've used for our clients. Hope you find them useful!
Swap Images
Swap images look fantastic and are also great fun to design, so try and use them if possible. Visitors find this interactive and interesting. Illy Collection Cups and Business Template 3 are example of a site we have designed using swap images. Fireworks makes it very easy to design web sites with swap images.
Rollover Images
Rollovers are another favorite. We try to use rollovers whenever possible - they are extremely simple and add a bit of class to a web site. If you don't want to use too many images that will result in a slower load time make sure you use text rollovers (Our menu on the right is an example of simple text rollovers).
DHTML
If you have sub menus or complex navigation systems, use DHTML. They look neat and are again very simple to use. Many sites offer free DHTML scripts for menus, navigation systems, tip boxes and more. They give you detailed instructions on how to use these scripts so it is really very easy to install. A good site is SimplyTheBest.
Flash
Though we don't recommend designing an entire site in Flash it may be a good idea to make an interesting Flash intro or insert small Flash animations in important pages of your site. Always take care to optimize your our Flash animations. Design eye-catching graphics to make your site stand out from the ordinary web sites. Try out some cool graphic effects - collages, feathering, bevels etc. and design attractive headers for a web site.
Use Tables Creatively
Design simple but smart web sites by just using tables in different ways. We recommend using tables because they are plain html and therefore don't take much time to load. As you know time is of essence on the Internet so it really is no use designing a fantastic graphic intensive web site that will take ages to load. On the other hand with cable and high modem speeds we can afford to design sites that are a combination of all the above ideas :)