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Beautiful Website Design 3 - The Right Tool
A beautiful website design means attractive graphics, layout, and colors first and foremost. However, these additions can have an impact on user experience beyond simply attracting the eye. If you want to focus on your website's appearance, you want to do more than just make sure it looks good. And before you create an entire website in Flash or turn all of the major headers into custom images, you should consider the impact that such actions have on your website as a whole. In the end, all these graphics and images are merely tools to use to improve the site as a whole.
The best graphics in the world are useless if nobody sees them. This point has two ramifications. First, you have to consider your SEO. A website created entirely in Flash can be incredibly impressive, but always remember that the search engines don't see the text in a Flash site. You limit the spiders' ability to crawl your content and collect your keywords when you use that design scheme. Likewise, any words you render as graphics have less impact for SEO. This is especially the case when the words are the ones that would normally be headers, bolded, or otherwise marked as more important. The search engines take note of this, but unfortunately, these are the very words that would work best as graphics. A skilled search engine optimizer can apply tactics to get the proper text on your page and visible to the search engines, potentially opening up some of these avenues, but sometimes you have to take a hit in appearance to get people to visit in the first place.
The other side of this rule is loading time. Although faster Internet connections are becoming more commonplace, there are still people who don't have high speed Internet, and even those that do may have to wait for a graphics-heavy page to load. Worse still are images that actually make visitors wait by the very fact of their existence, such as front-page introductory animations. While these may seem impressive, they are often a bad idea. Consider that a person coming to your site from the search engines is coming because it is looking for something, presumably information, possibly a product. If that visitor is impatient (and, since it's looking for something on-line, it probably is), the introductory animation may prompt it to search elsewhere before it even gets to view the whole thing (not even counting that a front page animation means there's no SEO-boosting text on your home page). Of course, there are potential ways around these problems, but they must be considered before you incorporate such tactics, however impressive they may be.
Graphics and animations that make navigation difficult or otherwise impede the viewer's ability to utilize the site must also be avoided. Although having your links rendered as airplanes that fly randomly around the site may seem innovative, it makes navigation a hassle. If you're going to have moving links, make sure their movement is along a steady path. If you are going to have things moving around the screen, keep it out of the way of the text, links, and other important areas. Also remember that movement and color can attract the eye; the goal of your images is to draw the user to the most important parts of your site, not distract it from them.
Flash, animations, and images all have their place in a website. They are meant to draw the user in, to improve its experience, and to direct it to the most important text and links. Used improperly, though, and they can have the exact opposite effect; sending the user away, hampering its navigation, and stealing its attention. Dominating the site with your imagery will only be a hindrance. But if you are looking for a way to improve your site and support your text, a beautiful website design is certainly the right tool.
The best graphics in the world are useless if nobody sees them. This point has two ramifications. First, you have to consider your SEO. A website created entirely in Flash can be incredibly impressive, but always remember that the search engines don't see the text in a Flash site. You limit the spiders' ability to crawl your content and collect your keywords when you use that design scheme. Likewise, any words you render as graphics have less impact for SEO. This is especially the case when the words are the ones that would normally be headers, bolded, or otherwise marked as more important. The search engines take note of this, but unfortunately, these are the very words that would work best as graphics. A skilled search engine optimizer can apply tactics to get the proper text on your page and visible to the search engines, potentially opening up some of these avenues, but sometimes you have to take a hit in appearance to get people to visit in the first place.
The other side of this rule is loading time. Although faster Internet connections are becoming more commonplace, there are still people who don't have high speed Internet, and even those that do may have to wait for a graphics-heavy page to load. Worse still are images that actually make visitors wait by the very fact of their existence, such as front-page introductory animations. While these may seem impressive, they are often a bad idea. Consider that a person coming to your site from the search engines is coming because it is looking for something, presumably information, possibly a product. If that visitor is impatient (and, since it's looking for something on-line, it probably is), the introductory animation may prompt it to search elsewhere before it even gets to view the whole thing (not even counting that a front page animation means there's no SEO-boosting text on your home page). Of course, there are potential ways around these problems, but they must be considered before you incorporate such tactics, however impressive they may be.
Graphics and animations that make navigation difficult or otherwise impede the viewer's ability to utilize the site must also be avoided. Although having your links rendered as airplanes that fly randomly around the site may seem innovative, it makes navigation a hassle. If you're going to have moving links, make sure their movement is along a steady path. If you are going to have things moving around the screen, keep it out of the way of the text, links, and other important areas. Also remember that movement and color can attract the eye; the goal of your images is to draw the user to the most important parts of your site, not distract it from them.
Flash, animations, and images all have their place in a website. They are meant to draw the user in, to improve its experience, and to direct it to the most important text and links. Used improperly, though, and they can have the exact opposite effect; sending the user away, hampering its navigation, and stealing its attention. Dominating the site with your imagery will only be a hindrance. But if you are looking for a way to improve your site and support your text, a beautiful website design is certainly the right tool.