Top 10 Rules of Website Design

My name is Lena and I am a student at Western Washington University.  I am enrolled in a class called Comm 350 and it is all about Emerging Communication Technologies.  One of the assignments that we have been given is to write a blog about new technologies.

Top 10 Rules of Website Design:

1. Keep your site updated – An updates site will bring back new visitors regularly.
2. Promote your site – If you want more viewers then you need to be able to promote it through advertising and on your business card.
3. Keep it simple – This is important that you make sure people can get around your site easily. It could be frustrating when you can't find what you're looking for and you could lose a viewer.
4. Your site should sell your business – The site should be there like it is a 24 hour salesperson.
5. View other sites – Do your research so you can gage what other successful website have done in order to gain viewers.
6. Stick with web-safe fonts – This is especially important because some people may not be able to display certain font on their computer. Another thing is to make sure that you keep your fonts to a limit of 3 different ones. You don't want to confuse your viewers.
7. Don't use too many colors - You don't have to use every color in the rainbow... keep it mono, duo, or tri-toned.
8. Explain your service one your page - Using allot of informative text in your website that states the services you do... this will greatly help your rankings in the search engines.
9. Don’t put animation in the way of your content – If possible, try to avoid making a website completely out of flash or out of graphics. This is because of search engine rankings and load time.
10. Domain name - Try to find one that is fairly short and easy to remember.