Simple Web Design Principles To Avoid

When undertaking web design, it is important to give the visitors to your website the best possible browsing experience. A website must be attractive to the eye, simple to navigate and informative.

In order to offer your users an optimal browsing experience, it is necessary to avoid the use of the following web design elements.

Flash Navigation

Adobe Flash creations are typically very effective both in terms of functionality and looks. This is especially true for buttons and menus. However, Flash is not perfect. In addition, a number of users may not have Flash available to them.

A website that used Flash navigation would prove useless to those visiting on an Apple iDevice (for example, an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) as the Flash Player is unavailable for use on such devices. This holds true for any device or Internet browser that fails to support Flash Player.

Furthermore, many browser users ensure that Flash is turned off in order to prevent security problems. It may therefore be wise to make use of image links and text. For animations and interactivity, try a scripting language such as JQuery or JavaScript.

Background Music

Try to avoid the use of background music unless you are designing a site that is related to music in some way. Avoid music that will play automatically when a page has loaded.

Background music may sound awesome to you, but if a visitor does not expect to hear music on your page, they will either go back to the page they were on initially or will make a desperate attempt to mute the music.

In addition, do not forget to consider that users of dial-up Internet will incur a long wait when loading your site.

Do not subject your visitors to this.

Extremely Tiny/Large FontsTo make sure that your site is readable, refrain from using unusually small or large fonts. Significantly small fonts are not easy to read while fonts that are excessively large create a requirement for excessive scrolling. A visitor who requires a different sized font can change it through his or her web browser.

Popups

Popups are typically used to show the visitor adverts or "important" messages. However, to most they are highly irritating. Popups interfere with a user's experience - they get in between the visitor and the website.

Popup windows have gained a bad reputation in the online community. For this reason, many browsers now possess functions to prevent them from being on display. You should not be reliant on popups for site functionality.

In short, the use of popup windows is frustrating and considered to be bad Internet etiquette.

Do not forget, as a web design expert, your job is to ensure that visitors to your site have the most pleasant browsing experience possible. When visitors are granted this, your site will do exactly what you need it to. If your site is not a pleasure to browse, visitors will be few and far between. They will visit once and will rarely return. This is not something that you would wish for.