Ever heard the old adage, why mess with a good thing?  Well, that’s certainly true when it comes to the layout of your website.  Your customers don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to look for information on your site.  There are certain things they expect, and if you want them to stick around, you really need to meet those expectations. 

Size Matters

It is important to keep your pages short.  The majority of web users will never scroll more than four pages down, and most prefer to have all of the information provided in two.

In order to make sure that web users with smaller monitors won’t have to scroll left and right to see the content on your site, it is best to limit the width of your page to 776 pixels.  However, you can consider a page width of 960 pixels if you know your audience is made up of higher end users with the latest technology. 

It’s important to keep the file size of your webpage small.  This includes not only the text on your page, but also the size of the graphics and other files that have to load in order to support your page.  The sum total of these files controls the speed at which your page loads.  There are a lot of people still using a 56K modem, and if it takes them longer than 8 seconds to load the key information on the page, they are on their way to check out another site.  It’s a good idea to test your pages for speed before turning it out to the real world.

Location, Location, Location

Web users are busy people, often having multiple things going on at one time, and for this reason, they will resize their browser windows to fit as much on their screen as possible.  Be sure to place your content at the top of the page and either center it or place it all the way to the left so it’s not affected by these changes to the browser size.

Most websites will place the navigation at the top of the page or to the left.  Since this is what your customers are used to, it’s really a good idea to stick with it.  The occasional site will place the navigation on the right, but this is only successful if done right.  The smart thing to do is stick with what you know works, and keep it up and to the left.

Short and Sweet

Visitors to your site really don’t like to read; they scan, and usually in the shape of an F.  They start at the top scanning left to right, move down a bit and scan left to right, followed by a scan down the left side of the page. 

This means that you need to keep your information short and sweet, make sure that the first two paragraphs on the page contain the important information that you want to get across quickly and follow these by bulleted or highlighted information with key data in the first two words of whatever is listed.

The Look

When designing your site, it’s a good idea to use web safe colors that will look the same on any computer with any browser.  And while you’re at it, don’t forget to test your color combinations for color deficient eyesight.  8% of all men and ½% of all women have some form of colorblindness.  That’s a good portion of your audience, so don’t forget about them.

Don’t flood your site with images or graphics that are popping and flashing all over the place.  Your audience will lose sight of the important stuff, your message.  Make sure it looks neat and clean by adding white space to break up and emphasize the information that you want to get across.

Finally, it’s important to be consistent with the look of your site as you go from page to page.  Once your customers have arrived at your site and decided they are interested enough to move on to the next page, don’t take a chance of losing them by trying something new.  Be sure to give them what they expect and they may stick around a little bit longer.