Website Planning Tips & Tricks

Elements in Webdesign knows how hard you work outside of trying to get a website together, so we've compiled some of the more pertinent things you should consider when you're planning to have your website created. We hope to alleviate some of the pain and time involved in all of this planning, as we want this transition to the web or to your website's update to be as smooth as possible. Here's our current list of "Tips and Tricks" for planning your site work.

Choosing your website color scheme

Keep your colors to a maximum of 4 complimentary colors in your website's color scheme. We will alter those a little bit for lighter & darker shades as needed to give your site more visual depth.,

Stay away from loud and obnoxiously bright colors for backgrounds and text, and make sure your text colors blend well with the background color so it doesn't hurt people's eyes to read it. Remember, you want them to stay on your site and be comfortable reading, not chase them away because trying to read it gives them a headache.

Menu Link Setup

Make sure your menu is very easily navigated and not over abundant with redundantly repetitive links. In other words, don't repeat links in multiple places on your menu. Create good categories for any drop-downs so that they make total sense to the visitor so they will know where to find what they are looking for.

How to avoid fuzzy unclear images

Make sure you provide your web designer with the largest images you can acquire so they can resize them as needed themselves. This assures that no matter where your images may go they will almost always look nice and clear because they didn't have to be stretched. Stretching to make a small image larger takes a lot of clarity and focus away from most images, so it's always better to shrink a larger image than it is to stretch a smaller one.

Can your page elements be seen

Although there are some really great Flash sites and Flash elements available such as Flash Galleries, Flash Menus, Flash Video players etc., we suggest that you stay away from Flash based elements. This will assure that your visitors should be able to see those items no matter what type of computer or mobile device they may be on. Granted, there are a handful of mobile browser apps that will be able to see and allow your visitors to view the Flash element, but…. Why take the chance that your visitors will know they can do that and lose them because they cannot see your menu to get around your website, or they cannot view the cool video that you have put on the page. Better to be safe than sorry in this instance.

Don't make your users squint to read your pages

Make sure your text size is large enough that people can read it without making it overly large. This will allow your visitors to see your text easily while allowing you to get more content on your pages.

Are you overdoing the emphasis on your text?

Don't make a lot of text in Bold (other than titles that is) so that the purpose of your bolding of the text is not lost on your visitors. One of the biggest mistakes we see done on many websites is to put tons of sentences and paragraphs in bold and bright colors so that it's almost all like that. You totally lose the meaning behind the bolding of the text or coloring of the text when you do that. Only use it on text for information that you want to truly emphasize as important. Remember, although we may all think our words are all very important, only certain things are important enough to emphasize them on the website pages.

Tell us about yourself, no really, tell us something

Make sure the About or Bio pages of your website include more than a couple of small paragraphs on the page. Tell them about yourself, tell them about your business, get into some details about different aspects of your business and/or yourself (don't get super personal, try to keep your personal aspects relevant to the content of your site if possible.  Be sure to include how long you've been in business, various locations you have been at if your business has an actual store front in a town. Remember, talking "about" your business or yourself is more than just an address and phone number and email.

Just how good are your services?

Testimonials are a great way to advertise your successes. Gather your customer or visitor comments as often as you can so you can put together a great area of your website for testimonials to your show new visitors that your products and/or services are appreciated and that your previous customers or visitors are happy with their choice to use your site or business.