To improve the chances of a successful website requires the design to be carefully considered...

When it come to designing a successful website there are many web development applications available. But in most cases an application will not make a successful website from a traffic or financial prospective.

Here are are five crucial design topics of web design that must be focused upon in order to make a website attractive and interesting to its visitors and retain your visitors attention.

• Content
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Usability
• Aesthetics
• Graphics

Content is King!

Content is the feature which must be constantly maintained and thought about. Visitors expect to find relevant and well written information which provides answers to the questions or statements they are entering into search engines.

Content needs to have no grammatical or spelling errors and needs to be on the same theme that runs throughout your website. The search engines will return to your website more often if the information changes or the amount of articles increase regularly. Ensure you are constantly adding good content to your website to increase the amount of "landing pages" you have.

A landing page is a web page where people go to once they click on an online advertisement or natural search engine listing, you should not rely on just your home page to attract visitors. An eLibrary is a good example of how to store your content or landing pages in a properly indexed fashion. With articles you can write useful relevant content which is keyword driven which will in turn increase your visitor traffic.

SEO

Before you start designing your website you need to understand some SEO basics.  SEO is the process that will lead to improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. When you understand the basics your website may get off to a good start from the moment it is published.

The first thing you should do is establish what Keywords are relevant to your business or theme, keywords. The keywords you select should be based on high usage with low competition. When you have your keywords they should be used in strategic positions within the structure of your website such as the name of your website, front page titles and descriptions and in the first and last paragraphs of any page content.

Web page loading speed is another critical SEO consideration. Ensure that your web page physical file size is as small as possible. 40 Kilobytes is optimum, we don't all have Broadband high speed internet. The measurable benchmark for web page loading speed is still a 56k modem speed. There are website that can measure your web page load speed if you don't have desktop software. Click here to test your webpage load speed

To understand more on how to implement SEO you should learn more about this important subject. If you don't, your website success will be very difficult to achieve. It is said that if your website is not found by a search engine then you don't exist!

Usability

Navigation links in your website must be easy to follow and designed in a way that will be consistent throughout your website. It MUST be fully functional and point to the correct items. Ensure that intended information can be reached within 3 clicks!

Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than two or three clicks to get the information they want or if they need to be Rocket Scientist to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the aims of your design is to keep usability easy, and keep it simple.

To achieve this, apply the following three usability fundamentals:-

• Provide a website search facility. - Visitors can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they want. This especially needed as your content grows quickly!
• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation. - This provides visitors with easy exploration through your site.
• Provide simple to follow content. - The message of a site should start off with simple and basic information with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanations as required.

In the cases above, the aim is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing your visitors return statistics.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and have a colour scheme that is balanced and easy on the eyes. Ensure that a compatible colour palette is used and the colours used complement each other. Colour palettes can be found around the net. Consider the background that your text will sit. Do some home work and find out which colours are best for text. Black on white, white on black which best? Ensure that your pages are clear and clutter free and the best use is made of white space, sometime less is more.

Graphics and Images

Not paying attention to your graphics and images can seriously hinder your website. We all like looking at pictures and illustrations, the old saying that a picture can say a thousand words is true enough but a search engine cannot index those thousand words and therefore is useless in SEO. However, we need pictures to enhance content.

The size of your images could cripple your website page load speed. It is said that if a web page takes more than 8 seconds to load the visitor will click somewhere else or use the dreaded Back button. Ensure all images and graphics used are optimised for web use. Small file size is the main aim of all images used in a website!.

Ensure that you don't waste the precious space on your web pages with irrelevant images, make sure pictures are relevant to the content and are attractive at the same time. Often strategically placed images can attract instant attention from visitors when they are surfin' quickly and encourage them to read the content.

The Internet is unscrupulously competitive

To have a successful commercial website, you have to keep some basic web design  principles in mind. Contrary to what many may tell you, it is rarely possible to have an Internet commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. You don't have to hire a professional web designer for a small website all you need to do is ensure that you prepare your website properly and apply these five basic tips to get your off to a good start and on the road to success.