Effective Web Site Design

Written by Jimmy Ellis

Thesis

• Designing Web sites to be attractive to your target audience, easy to use, and easy to look at will benefit your company by retaining customer base and lowering marketing expenses.

Hypothesis

• It is my contention to inform the audience of the necessary design steps and considerations to create an effective Web site to promote a product, service, or person.

Methodology

• Interviewed Jesse Wells on November 4, 2003 to ascertain the four most important design elements he considers when doing a Web site for the college.

• Researched the Internet for theories on color, typography, layout and navigation.

• Went through the steps of changing a default Web site created through Angelfire.com to an effective Web site to promote a service.

Preview

• Parts of a Web site

• A basic Web site

• Layout basics

• Target your audience

• Navigation (differentiate your links)

• Use color to promote

• Refinement to a finished project

Parts of a Web site

• Title: the name of the page/document

• Body: the main portion of the document

• Navigation: series of links that make it capable to explore the contents of a Web site

a basic Web site

• A list of links to individual pages

• Body text• Default scrollbar

colors• Left align

Contrast• Choose colors for the

text and links that will show up on the background you choose.

• Make sure they don’t interfere with colorblind people’s perception of your site.

Develop White Space

• White space is the space between text and other elements on a page.

• White space is used to emphasize what’s there or what’s not.

Create margins

• Margins are used to make text more visually appealing and easier to read.

• Text without margins stresses the eyes.

Language• Make sure that the

language you use is going to be understandable to your target audience.

• Try to avoid jargon. If unavoidable you may want to include a section with definitions.

Typography

• While it’s okay to identify different sections of text with a different color or a different font, effective Web sites will use one of the most common fonts that computers come loaded with.

Putting it together

• A clean looking, easy to read, easy to navigate, easy on the eyes Web site with high contrast, easy to understand language, and easily identifiable parts.

Choosing Colors

• Use the RGB (red,green,blue) color wheel or the 6x6x6 cubes to choose complimentary, split complimentary, triad and analogous color schemes.

• ColorSchemer.com also has a great software program that identifies each of those color schemes based on one color you choose.

Finished Projects

Works Cited

“Effective Typography in Web Design.” 1999. Fortress Web Design and Hosting. 30 Nov. 2003 <http://www.fortressdesign.com/typography.html>

http://www.tcd.ie/Webdesign/layout.phphttp://www.tcd.ie/Webdesign/colour.phphttp://www.tcd.ie/Webdesign/frames.phphttp://www.tcd.ie/Webdesign/lang.php

http://www.arnb.com/webdesign/chap7/chap7.htmhttp://www.arnb.com/webdesign/chap7/cwheel/cwheel.htmhttp://www.arnb.com/webdesign/chap7/cwheel/cube.htm

Works Citedhttp://www.yorvic.york.ac.uk/~mgwt/KKwebcourse/colourscience/colourchoosing.htmlhttp://www.yorvic.york.ac.uk/~mgwt/KKwebcourse/colourscience/coloursignificance.htmlhttp://www.yorvic.york.ac.uk/~mgwt/KKwebcourse/colourscience/coloursignificance.htmlhttp://www.yorvic.york.ac.uk/~mgwt/KKwebcourse/colourscience/colourmodels.html

http://www.colorschemer.com/http://www.colorschemer.com/tutorial.htmlhttp://www.colorschemer.com/help1.html