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4: Website Appearance

Don't concentrate on your website appearance at the expense of content. Yes, it should be unobtrusive, emphasize your branding, pleasant on the eye and download quickly but its your content and search position that will make or break your website.

'A picture tells a thousand words' - very true. A poor picture will tell visitors to expect a shoddy website - content an' all. Irrelevant and unnecessary pictures slow the page down and confuse visitors. Passé graphics like rotating email icons tell visitors you haven't attended to your website in at least three years. Huge, slow graphics tell visitors you don't care that they are on a dial up connection.

website-designers.co.za websites use only graphics that are relevant and optimized for speed.

A website design composed largely of vivid colours (right) tells visitors that you have no idea how to construct a proper palette. We like to use subtle colours that are easy on the eye so we can use small amounts of vivid colour to draw the visitor's eye to items of interest.

Many local websites use avant garde colour combinations that may be attractive but pay no attention to visitors who may be old with defective eyesight or those that may be colour blind.

Durban Website Designers websites use a restrained palette (right) based on the company logo which takes into account the audience that is expected to visit the website.

Two other things: don't go for the 'cinerama' look - fluid pages that fill the screen. At higher resolutions, the text is unreadable. Two: no light text on dark background. Very trendy but dreadful for readability - and printability.

Graphics are the single biggest item that will affect download speed.