Make it easy to read and pleasant to the eyes
Choose your background carefully. Use only white, black, or soft colors for your background. If you use an image for your background, keep it subtle. Soft textured backgrounds can be used if you want a little more flare than a solid color. Do not use busy backgrounds, they distract from your text and information.
Make the text visible. Sounds basic but many web sites are built that have text that is hard to read. Text should be large enough to read and use a color that is in contrast but does not fight with the background. One example of colors that fight is Blue and Red. (If you put these two colors together, the text will be jumpy and hard to read.)
Use images wisely, graphics does add to the look of your page but don’t overdo
Do not use too many graphics. Unless the purpose of your web page is to show a group of images, use only enough to enhance your page. Too many graphics distract from your information and slows down the loading of the page.
Do not use large graphics. Keep the size small, large images take too long to load and slows down the time the page takes to load. Always use 72 dpi for images; this is a standard in email and web pages.
Scanning Tip!
If you are scanning an image to add to your web page, use a program that will allow you to edit your image size. Scan the image at either 300 dpi or 600 dpi. After it is scanned, change the size to 72dpi before saving. This will give you a better quality image than if you had scanned at 72 dpi. Also, change the pixel size to further fit it for your page.
Animated Gifs! ARRG! Animated gifs are cute but can be very distracting. If you use animated gifs, just use them if they add to your page and only use one or two to a page. Too many animated gifs are distracting.
PROOFREAD! Check spelling and grammar
Always use a spell checker. If the program you use does not have a spelling and grammar checker, type your information in a Word Processor (such as Microsoft Word). After you are through editing, copy and paste your information to your web page program.
Proofread! Do not depend solely on your spell checker. Spellcheckers are wonderful tools but they cannot find all mistakes. Spellcheckers are a program with a big list of words (called their dictionary) that it compares with the words in your document. If you used the word kind but meant to use find, or if you transpose letters and type form instead of from, the spell checker will not detect the error. After you have proofread your page, try to find someone else to proofread it for you. Another person will find mistakes easier since they are looking at it with a new perspective. If you cannot have someone else proofread for you, take a break and come back to it with a clear mind to do a final proof.
Use Simple Navigation
Give access to the main pages from the Home Page and use the same menu bar throughout. Place the menu bar close to the top. Most viewers will not scroll to the bottom of the page just to find a menu bar. Avoid using complicated Navigation that requires viewers to click 3 or more times to reach the page the need. Always make it simple to go back to the Home Page.
To sum it up: Keep it simple
Basically, make sure it is simple and pleasing to the eyes. Don’t just think what is cool to you. Not everyone wants to look at “Cool” pages, they want to look at pages that they can casually look at without struggling to find or read the information. I have seen pages that had a dark background with a different dark color for text. The only way to read the page was to highlight the text with the mouse. People viewing your page do not want to struggle to read your info.
