Making a site look professional is not that difficult, you only need to follow some rules. But it is so easy to go from a professional looking finish to a childish version that you need to take care at every step.
There are no fabulous secrets to making a website look professional, you just need to look at the result and ensure that you keep on track. Here are my favourite secret ideas to follow!
Do not make it too personal! - Unless you are selling yourself as a person, for instance a children’s entertainer, then do not put a load of personality into the website. Too often I hear from my sales team that a customer would like a bit of this in and a bit of that. Yes, they make the web sites look very personalised, but too often these take away from the professional look.
Reduce the design team - One of the biggest causes of a website going from a professional look to a amateur look is when too numerous people are involved in the design. If they all read and obeyed the rest of the hints, then this would not be a problem. But at every person’s review they each want to put their mark on a website and suddenly all manner of tweaks and extras are being added. Cramming all of these banners, dancing cows, splashes of colour and more onto the page that every single one of the committee have added soon destroys the look.
Watch the font size - The tiniest reduction of font sizes is sometimes all that is needed to take a site from looking home built to a professional looking site. Use relative font sizes (measured in em) rather than actual font sizes and if the reader needs larger text they can click a button in their browser to increase it. But large font sizes that shout out to the reader do not look professional. Sadly, quite often that means the default font size (especially in Arial font) does not look good.
Don’t get carried away with colours - It may be clever to add in heaps of blocks of different colours, but it does not look extraordinary. Keep to some simple looking colour blocks nicely positioned about the page.
Use professional images - Sorry, but snaps taken on the camera of your phone phone may look good, but buying a few images from a top quality stock photography directory (I use iStockPhoto) gives such an excellent finish to the site that it is well worth the small amount that you pay.
Don’t think movement is a good thing - Loads of movement is never good, not on a web site. One or two small, smooth flash animations could add to the page, let's say on the header, but placing ample of clever banners, snowflakes falling down the screen, light bulbs that glow and fade and so on will nearly always look tacky.
In short, to make a site look professional try to not be too clever. Just because you have learnt how to add a scrolling image does not mean you have to. Use clever tricks merely when unquestionably needed and do not try to show off with tricks. Your website design will do the showing off for you.
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Written by Keith Lunt, who offers a web design Merseyside service. For more useful tips about good web design call into the blog.
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