Appearance & Usability
Website graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant!
Appearance
This relates to every one of your main pages, but is particularly important on your home page. Remember, your Home Page is the first thing your visitors see. It's like your 'shop front' in the offline world. It needs to look appealing and welcoming to make people want to 'come in' and look around.
Your page should look:
Clean
Uncluttered
Professional
Attractive
Your website should avoid flashing gizmos, brash colours, animations etc. Your site should be easy on the eye, and should make people feel immediately at home. Don't distract them with unnecessary gimmicks, or too much clutter. Your aim is to put them immediately at ease. Otherwise, when confronted with too much 'in your face' content, they'll simply click the back button on their browser and go elsewhere.
Usability
It's Important to create a site for your business that fulfils all the following criteria:
Design a clear and simple navigation system
Keep it consistent
Use appropriate text inside links
Add a text-based site map (large or complex sites)
Include a home page link inside your main navigation system or site logo links to home page
Include a site search box
Keep the content clear and simple
Don't save the best for last
Make page content easy to scan
Consideration for appearance and usability is paramount when creating your website, many web designers overlook the simplest guidelines which inevitably ends up with the site looking cluttered and unusable.
