The Do's and Dont's of Web Design

DO something in regards to branding your site. Your website is a product even if it's free or public so your site must always have an identity. Choose a proper title that will remind visitors of what your website is about, create a logo if possible. Make sure that there is something to remind people of your website and make sure that it reminds them of the right things.

DO pay attention to both style and content. They are equally important and serve their own purpose. Content is what most visitors look for and it's the part of the site that's going to make them come back. However, quality of content is not easily noticeable at first glance. Enter: Style. Style will not stand on its own and can't keep visitors coming back specially if updates to the site layout are rare. Style's purpose is to attract a visitor's attention and draw him to the content. They come because of the style, they stay - and come back - because of the content.

DON'T waste your visitors' time. One common trait of web surfers is that they don't want to waste time. The internet's immediacy and accessibility is what attracts most of them. If you waste their time with unnecessary menu animations, flash movies that take longer to load than to watch, and confusing website structure - they will leave. And probably never come back. If your site offers something good, present it to website visitors immediately.

DON'T commit to an update schedule that you can't follow. If you tell them there's an update every Monday, make sure they'll find new content on Monday. Keeping to a tight schedule will inspire a feeling of loyalty with visitors, and at the same time, it can also serve as a means of control. If you have trained visitors to expect new content every Monday, it gives you an exact target on when to avoid downtimes. If you take down the site to implement new features on a Sunday, you won't disappoint bulk of your readership because majority of them visit and expect new content every Monday.

DON'T use unethical means of promoting your site. Use proper channels like trading links and registering your sites to webrings, search engines and just plain one on one promoting. SPAMMING your URL on messageboards, mailing lists, and other sites' comment boxes may attract attention at first, but after the initial wave of hits, none of them will be coming back and you just made a bad impression on all of them. Worse, you may even attract malicious surfers who could deface or compromise your site.

It's a very short list of DOs and DON'Ts, but the tips mentioned above are important and may be crucial in deciding whether your website will stay online for a long time.