The single most important graphic element on your Website or blog is, without a doubt, your header graphic.

If your site lacks an eye-catching, targeted and topic-specific header graphic, it runs the risk of being ignored by untold numbers of potential clients and readers. But an attention-grabbing, well-designed header graphic does three things that are absolutely essential for your site to survive and thrive:

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1. It lets people know what your site is about instantaneously.

Congratulations, someone has visited your Web site! Now, whether he stays to look around or immediately hits the back button to escape depends largely on your header graphic.

Your header graphic is the first page element your site visitors will see when they arrive at your Web site or blog. An effective header graphic assures site visitors that they have arrived at the correct destination and it confirms that your content or product is exactly what they are looking for.

If your header does not clearly communicate your site’s topic, visitors will leave in search of another site that fulfills their needs and expectations better.

2. It distinguishes your site as professional and authoritative.

Your Web site or blog visitors must trust your expertise, whether you sell a product or relay information, in order for your site to be successful.

A sloppy, fuzzy, boring or poorly designed header graphic indicates amateur site management and will earn you the skepticism of everyone who sees it. A polished, error-free header graphic with clear images, sharp fonts and site-specific art, however, will earn your visitors’ trust because it lends credibility and sophistication to your site.

If your site design looks professional, visitors will expect that you are, too.

3. It brands your site with a unique identity.

Identity recognition is everything when it comes to building a successful business or personal reputation. You want your site visitors to be able to recognize your site next week, next month and next year, even if they only visited it once before.

A strong, unique header graphic combined with a positive user experience at your Web site or blog will ensure that your site visitors never confuse you with someone else. If your header graphic is doing its job, your site will stand out from the crowd and convey the message that visitors can count on you for products, services and information they won’t find anywhere else.

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Before you go blasting NAV links all over the place you should first consider the style and placement location on the page. There are two primary possibilities for link style – Buttons & Text links.

- Buttons – This style of link is most suited for visual appeal or aesthetics. The button size determines how much text can be placed on the button as a description. Typically you are limited to one or two short words.

Anchor Text Link - Text links – This style of link is suited for providing a more detailed description of the link. This style also has a huge benefit as an SEO element.

After considering the style of the link, the next critical factor is placement. Where NAV links are placed varies from site to site, the most common place is either vertically on the left top side of the page or horizontally across the top of the page. While there are other places for NAV links I would suggest that one of these two locations be used. Most people are use to finding links on the left or top so why rock the boat? Remember you want to make navigation as easy as possible.  However no matter where you place the site NAV links, it’s of the highest priority to consistently place those links in the same location on each and every page of the site.

Here are 3 additional tips for improving site navigation.
Some sites place NAV links in unusual places. The most common place is across the top or down the left side of all pages. However there are three other areas for placement of NAV links that will aid visitors when visiting your site.

1) In the page footer. It can be frustrating to get to the bottom of a long page then have to scroll back to the top to find the NAV links. Having NAV links in the page footer is a nice convenience for the user.

2) In a sitemap. A sitemap should contain links to all pages within the site. This makes it easy for a user to quickly and easily find all information or pages on the site. The sitemap NAV link is typically located in the page footer. BTW – A sitemap aids search engines in finding and indexing the pages of your site.

3) Within the flow of text. If you have vital pages that you want your visitors to see you can make additional access easy by placing a NAV link in the flow of content or text. Users, when reading, can simply click the link without having to traverse the web page to find the NAV link to get to the page of interest – very cool!   You can also gain benefit with search engines by using the keyword of the page being linked to as the text for the link.

For sure navigation is important for the success of your website. The easier you can make it for a visitor to travel around the site the happier they will be. This alone does not guarantee a customer will buy your product or service but it does help to ensure they won’t leave frustrated.

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There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

- SEO – Getting free traffic to your site.
- Usability – Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.
- Aesthetics – Visual appeal.
- Content – Valid, up to date, relevant information
- Graphics – Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO
Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.    

Usability
Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

• Provide a site search tool. A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.
• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.  This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.
• Provide logical and simple to follow content. The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed. 

In the cases above the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics
A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.     

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content
An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written, without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up to date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics
You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site. 

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

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Why is website design important? A poorly designed site can severely increase the bounce rate of incoming traffic, which translates to a loss in business profit. When people wish to buy something from a site, all they have to do is go to the site and make a purchase. There is no need for a face-to-face meeting with the people who are selling the product, so all of their assumptions about the quality and reliability of that product will be based on the visual or audio presentation of the site. If a site does not look professional, is unattractive or has poor usability, customers will have reservations about using the product or service the site represents. The bottom line; if your site design is poor your financial bottom line will be poor.  

There are two main components from which most people determine whether a website design is “good” or “bad.” There’s the usability component, which focuses on functionality, the effective presentation of information, and efficiency. Then there’s the purely aesthetic component, which is all about presentation, animations, and sexy graphics. Some designers get caught up in the aesthetics and graphics and forget about the user, and some usability experts get lost in their user testing and forget about visual appeal. In order to reach people and retain their interest, it’s essential to maximize both.

Usability
You can anticipate two types of users coming to your site: those that want information fast with minimal effort and those that are willing to take some time to explore. You can satisfy both types of visitors by implementing these two concepts within the design of your site.
1. Site search tool. A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.
2. Usable, intuitive and consistent site navigation.  This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through the site.

Aesthetics
Everything matters when it comes to web design, and one of the important concerns of website design is aesthetics. The color palette, layout balance, unity, and emphases of graphics and text will affect your visitor’s experience. The lack of visual appeal of a site can easily raise the bounce rate and cause the loss of many potential customers or clients.

It is advisable to use colors and fonts consistently throughout the design of your website. If you are planning to include images, make sure they are good quality images, low quality images will give visitors the impression the website was designed by an amateur, causing them to think twice about buying from you. A website that has a professional design, look and feel will help you gain the trust of potential customers.

When designing a website, keep in mind there are several key components (Usability and Aesthetics) that will make your site more enjoyable to visit. A site has to be easy to navigate with good usability, easy on the eye, contain quality content and be worthy of a visitors time. If you achieve these qualities within the design of your site you can expect to have a low bounce rate and a high success rate.

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Basically, web design refers to the development of web pages to make up a website. Each web page should present information that is relevant to the theme of the website. In the past, web design only involved the development of the content and appearance of a website, but as the Internet has become more popular and the competition between websites has become more intense, web developers began to delve into other design concerns to create a more effective formula for online success. The design concerns of a non-commercial website are varied, and are mostly dependent on the objectives of its owner. On the other hand, commercial websites have a fixed set of design concerns and issues that are paramount to having a successful website.

Content refers to the information (text, graphics, videos, pictures, audio, etc.) that is presented in a website. Having engaging and useful content will make your website more enjoyable and worthwhile to visit. You should make sure that your content is relevant to the theme of your website. If you’re selling car wash products through your website, you should only provide information about car washing, car washing products and how your car wash products benefit the visitor. Going off topic of the main theme is definitely detrimental and will drive your visitors away in disgust. It is important that the information is well-written and interesting, so that it can compel your visitors to take action.

Usability of a website determines how easy it is for your visitors to find information and navigate about the site. If your website has an easy-to-use interface and a convenient navigation setup, your visitors will actually enjoy going through your website. Internet users do not like to spend too much time trying to figure out how to get the information they want. Ideally, they wish to be able to get the information they are looking for in just one or two clicks. You can make the information in your website more easily accessible with good navigation.

Appearance of your website is important. The graphics and the written content on your website should complement each other, so that there will be a certain sense of consistency throughout your website. If your website has a consistent theme, it will look more professional and appealing to your visitors. The layout of graphics and text on a webpage is somewhat of a science. There have been many studies on what works and what will cause visitors to leave. For example, there are specific areas on a website that people naturally look within the first moments of seeing your website. If these key areas are appealing then a visitor has a much higher probability of staying. If these areas are trashy then the visitor is likely to make a quick exit.

Visibility of a website is required in order to draw adequate visitor traffic. In order to be successful you will have to improve or boost the visibility of your website to gain the traffic you need. This can be achieved through online marketing strategies, such as paid advertising and search engine optimization. You can actually improve your search engine visibility by using keywords and key phrases relevant to your topic in your design and content. Submitting articles to article directories and creating backlinks (links from other websites) to your website is another way to promote the visibility of your website.

Having a good web design will not only bring more traffic to your website; it will also make sure that your visitors will stay for a longer time to explore it. If your visitors feel comfortable and compelled enough, they may just buy something from you. You will only stand to gain if you spend more time and effort to create a well-designed website.

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