Top 10 Features of a Well-designed Website

How do you know what is a good website and what is not? All opinions differ, but my philosophy is that good website is clean, clear, and easy to navigate. Using this guide as my philosophy, here are some features you can look for when looking at other websites and portfolios of web designers.

1. Consistent design - Each page in the website should look as if it belongs to the same website. Visitors should not have to guess if they are still at the same website or if they have left.
2. Easy navigation - Where are the buttons? The most standard position for navigational buttons are at the top or the left. Not to say that the buttons can't be anywhere else, but you don't want your visitors to have to hunt for them.
3. Consistency in colors, font, and alignment - One can always tell the amateur website designers because they have each sentence in a different color or font, and some sentences are left-justified, while others are centered. This is distracting to the visitor, which can result in the visitor leaving the site.
4. Correct spelling - Errors in spelling reflect badly upon the organization as well as the web designer.
5. No horizontal scrolling - We are used to scrolling vertically (down), but no visitor should EVER have to scroll horizontally.
6. Contact information is clear - You WANT people to find you. Contact information should be easy to find and on every page.
7. Images should not be too large - Not everyone has broadband Internet access, and time is precious. If a visitor has to wait too long for images to load, she will leave.
8. Not too many images - A good website is not cluttered with graphics and images. You want the visitor to immediately have a sense of what the information is and where he may want to go.
9. Not too many bells and whistles - Flash, animated graphics, and the like are fun, but one can overload on them. As an example, how many times have you clicked "Skip intro"?
10. Sense of the organization - The design of the website should be in keeping with the mission and image of the organization. A serious corporation is not going to have cartoons on its site.

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"Top 10 Features of a Well-designed Website" by Dawn Goldberg. Visit VirtualAngel.biz for more information on Virtual Angel's website design services.