When building a good website you should do the following:

• Break very long pages into several ones and add cross links between them;
• Use readable text size (many experts argue about what font size is the best for websites as fonts of the same size may look different in various web browsers and operational systems, but you should remember that it is advisable to use fonts of at least 10pt. for the body of your webpage);
• Make sure you check your spelling;
• Position the most important content as close to the top of the page as possible;
• When laying out you web page in tables make sure you set the table width in percentage instead of a fixed number in pixels in order to fit the screens of various resolutions;
• Most of web designers optimize websites for today’s most popular screen resolution which is 1024 X 768 and you can do it as well;
• Make sure your background and text colors have enough contrast for the text to be easily readable (black text on white background, white text on black background or other colors which contrast with each other);
• Limit number of fonts used on one page to 2-3. Use sans-serif typeface like Verdana or Arial as they are easier to read on-screen;
• Test how your website looks in various web browsers and screen resolutions;
• Try to use only JPEG and GIF formats for your web page graphics. Optimize your graphics in such a way that image files were as small as possible while retaining decent quality;
• It is advisable to use thumbnails (miniaturized pictures) and enable clicking on them to reach the original size images;
• Use “alt” attribute for all pictures irrespective whether they are links or not. It will help people with disabled graphics;
• Design your pages in such a way that they would load as quick as possible;
• If your website is designed in flash, consider providing an HTML version of the site;
• If your web page is too long, provide navigational links at the bottom of the page for the user not to have to go back to the top of the page to find the navigation elements;
• Use your logo image or a site header as a link to your Home Page (except on the Home Page itself);
• Consider creating a so call “breadcrumb trail” to facilitate navigation on your site. This breadcrumb trail looks like Home > Our Services > Subsection > Page;
• Search tool is advisable for big websites. Set your search box to execute search on your website, but not the web;
• Design a custom error page with the links to the main sections of your website;
• Make your links descriptive by using meaningful anchor text for the links;
• Use consistent color for your links all over your website;
• When linking to Excel, Word or Acrobat files, use a little icon near the link to identify the file format you want to link to;
• Make sure you have working links all over the site. Check the site for broken links using special online tools or software;
• Include your logo to all pages at the same place;
• Tag-line is good for your branding and a brief business description. Try to come up with one for your business and place it somewhere near your logo;
• Create a favicon with your logo or the one which reflects your brand colors etc. Favicon is a little custom icon which appears next to your URL in the browser address bar;
• Make the same look and feel for each page of your website. You can use your brand colors;
• Use the About Us page to provide all relevant information about your business.

You should avoid doing the following to make your website look professional:

• Do not use sophisticated words or a lot of slang (unless you write for the expert in your niche) as your content can be read by people who are not native speakers of your language but who are still your potential customers;
• If possible do not use extensively long text as this is sometimes not a pleasant thing to read from a screen;
• Do not use long blocks of text. Try to divide text into smaller portions by means of paragraphs, bullets. It is also advisable to use “eye anchors” like highlighted keywords, subtitles, hyperlinks to facilitate scanability;
• Do not make your site look amateurish by using animated backgrounds, a lot of page counters, center justified text blocks, extensive number of animated GIF images etc. All this reveals your website as rookie;
• Do not annoy your visitors with pop-up windows since even if you want to use them for other purposes than advertising, people usually perceive pop-up windows as one of the most annoying kinds of adverts and many visitors can be willing to get rid of the pop-up window without paying any attention to what it is about (just as I always do, for example). Excessive ads may deter visitors from your website;
• Avoid using graphics which look like ads (unless they are adds indeed) as many visitors may ignore them;
• Do not underline any text except links. Underlining is like a standard feature of links and people may think that your underlined text is a link and get frustrated if it is not;
• Avoid linking to uncompleted or under construction pages.

Above are listed only the basic web design rules recommended by most of web design experts. However, many web designers use their own unique solutions to create amazing websites. However even in this case they adhere to most of the above mentioned rules. And, of course, the key to your online business success is hiring experienced web designers and developers. We hope you will set your choice on our creative team of web design specialists.