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Effective Web Design - Not Exactly What You Might ThinkWebsites are not carnivals, therefore they should not be treated as such. A lot of people approach websites with the idea of having a flashy interface, complete with bells and whistles. Truth be told this is ineffective. Users are after usability and utility, not the visual design. Designing websites around the user, user-centric design, has become the leading approach for successful and profitable websites. At the end of the day, if users can not use your website it might as well not exist.Before beginning a user-centric design you must first understand how users think. It has been proven that users like quality and credibility of a site over the design. If a site has outstanding content with a horrid design its still going to get visitors, however if a site does not have any relevant content its going no where. Next in line in understanding users is the fact that users are impatient and looking for instant gratification. Users will not read your site, they will scan it looking for anything that will trigger their intuition. If they do not find anything they are looking for they will leave. The last part to understanding users is knowing that they want to have control. Websites should have a persistent layout throughout the site with a free flowing navigation, allowing users to browse the site as they wish. I have broken down creating an effective website into three parts: Part One: Don't Make Users ThinkNow that you understand how users think you are ready to begin your design. The first part is to keep your website as obvious and self-explanatory as possible. Do your very best to not make users think and clear up any questions they might have going into your site. With this being said its also very important to keep your website simplistic and not to be afraid of whitespace. Users seldom visit websites to enjoy the design, they are looking for information. Theres no better way to direct users to information than to reduce the imagery on a page, thus creating whitespace. Doing this effectively will enhance your overall website design.Part Two: Stay FocusedPart two in your user-centric design is to not exhaust users patience. Do not create strenuous forms asking for more information that you personally know what to do with. You want to manage users' attention keeping them focused on the task at hand. Doing so can be done by using images, eye-popping text, and so forth. However be sure to keep it simple and guide users through each page keeping in mind that the less understanding needing to take place, the better user experience.Part Three: Use Text EffectivelyThe third part to designing an effective website is to use text effectively. Users are quickly scanning pages looking for information of interest, in this the text for web is different than the text for print. Text for web needs to be short and to the point, easily scannable with the layout, and used with plain and objective language. Organize the page to be broken down with different levels of headings, sub headings, and even bulleted list when applicable. The easier the information is to find and read the better the results.To sum it all up:
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