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The Essentials of Web Design That Works | Copyblogger

February 17, 2013 by Peter Fletcher

Don’t get too fancy with your navigation. People look upwards and toward doors for fire exits, they look up and to the left looking for the next page to click. Don’t make it hard for them.

If your site is in English, your visitors will read it from top to bottom and left to right. When they arrive on your home page, their eyes will naturally go to the top left in search of confirmation that they’re in the right place.

And don’t get too fancy with your navigation terms. Use phrases and words that people expect.

If there’s a fire in the restaurant you go to tonight, will you look around for the egress? The portal? Or the exit?

When peopleclick on the linksin your navigation bar, it’s because they want to leave the page they’re on, and go someplace else. That means it’s not the place to trot out your creative tendencies and start calling your “About” page “Full Disclosure,” or “Dispatch from Headquarters.”

Just call it “About”and stop making your visitors work so hard.

People want to read your text. Use lots of white space, keep paragraphs short and the contrast between text and background high.

Don’t use too many colours. Keep it to two, with a possible third as an accent.

Use fonts that make your site stand out, without getting too fancy.

via The Essentials of Web Design That Works.

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Filed Under: Web design Tagged With: design, usability

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