On the 10th day of Christmas JCK helped me define, some great ideas for web design

While it is impossible for us the give you an exact recipe of the web design that will work for you and your company we can certainly give you some thoughts that will help you along the way, so here goes

1. These days your design needs to work on a range of devices, from a mobile phone and iPad through to desktop machines. There are some great responsive designs you can use to manage this process for you, or if your site is not responsive remember to develop a mobile version of your site that can be employed.
2. Colour is important, and while we all have our favourite colours so you won’t get it right for everyone, do give it some serious consideration. For example, you wouldn’t build a medical site in red; the colour promotes danger and mistrust to a degree, so be careful!
3. Fonts are also necessary when people read; typically they do not read each letter but more the shape of the word which the brain then interprets. If you use difficult fonts, or italic text a lot, these forms become disfigured so rendering your site difficult to read. Also, bear in mind the size of the font and space around it, make it a pleasurable reading experience even for those that have poor eyesight.
4. With design, know what you can take out, sometimes websites can be over designed and so they lose their way. If you can identify bits you can lose, typically you’ll be left with what is relevant to your brand, and that will work perfectly.
5. Your website home page should identify with your customer; they need to land and think ‘yes that is me’ make sure you have identified your clients carefully and have depicted who they are on the home page.
6. Images are important; it is worth investing in some good quality images so that you can have your library of resources, a poorly shot, low-lit image will have a detrimental effect on user experience.
7. Your content should follow the age old rule of marketing, the golden rules of communication which are:

A – Attention : I – Interest : D – Desire : A – Action

And finally, your website should be a non-judgemental, trusted resource that users feel confident and comfortable using. Ask yourself the question, “would I give this company my credit card details” – if the answer is yes you’re on the right tracks!