Website Navitation and Layout

This blogger provides the same kinds of tips that I do in my articles and blogging topics.

His main advice is:

A clean layout and neat navigation... enhances its looks.

Not only does a clean layout and neat navigation enhance the look of our website, it will also attract, and keep, your visitors since they will find it easy to get around your website the get the information they need.

Here is the rest of the post titled: "Give importance to layout and navigation", which I've posted in its entirety (with a few of my additions, in italic). You can read other tips and recommendations here.

Give importance to layout and navigation

· Prepare your site navigation before designing to prevent cluttering up the site with forgotten links.

· A clean-cut and uniform navigation system is a must.

· If you have too many links then you should use drop-down menus for your main topics.

· The navigation should be flexible enough to accommodate any amount of additional links since you probably will be adding pages periodically. For this using drop-down menus or section home pages is a must [Not necessarily a must, since you can add more links horizontally. But drop-down menus will accommodate a large number of links.]

· Keep your main links together as much as possible so that visitors can absorb them at one shot and know what your site conveys about your company. Check out how all our major links appear in our top navigation bar and all related section links are listed in the right hand side menu.

· There is no harm is showcasing important links (even repeated links) that you think might interest the visitor. Small boxes describing the link should look good.

· If you like a graphic intensive site and find there is not much space for accommodating all your links, you can have a separate home (splash) page and all other pages as content pages. Thus your home page can have visual appeal and your inner content pages can have elaborate navigation structures while focusing on the content.

· Use your navigation space efficiently. Use short, clear and precise words in your links so that your visitors know what the corresponding page will contain.

Background Colors Revisited

I am reposting this important blog entry on background colors.

The background color of your site affects how people read the information at hand, and is therefore extremely important.

News sites, which mostly on text almost always have a white, or very light, background. And most professional museums and galleries, whose main attraction are the images, also use white as their background.

My recommendation will always be: keep the background light. A little creativity (pale yellow or cream) may add to the uniqueness of your site, but for maximum clarity, keep the background light.

Addendum: Try the link at the end of the post to view different background colors with a multicolored of text.
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Background Colors

One of the most difficult decisions to make with a website is the background. Text is usually best read when on a contrasting background. But, usually, it is much easier on the eyes if the background is light, and the text is dark. Even different colors are easier to read if the background is lighter.

Think about it, most of the time we're looking at things in daylight - a light background. At night, a dark background, even with as many lights as we shine on things, it is still more difficult to see our way around things than during the day.

See what you think (and see) by clicking on different background options at this very ingenious link.