Your First Impression, Make It Count

When others don’t personally know you or your company, how your website looks can say a lot about your business to prospective clients, existing clients and anyone else who may see the work. It’s important to make the extra effort to educate yourself about recent Web 2.0 trends when designing or re-designing you website in order to have it look its very best.

While designing a custom website, think of the page design as the framework or skeleton and the textual content and images as the finishing layers within that framework. Design decisions about the layout, typography and web copy are critical to the website’s success.

Consider the following guidelines for creating a clean, simple website:

• Webpage Layout
• Allow ample space between elements
• Follow the guidelines for good typography
• Use headings, subheadings and bullets to separate information
• Minimize the use of clip art
• Use 72 dpi, well-cropped photographs
• Use color for a specific purpose — to direct attention, create emphasis, or differentiate textual content

Each element on a webpage should function as part of the whole rather than a separate entity. This can be achieved by grouping elements or by creating obvious similarities of line, shape, or color. The end result of a balanced layout is equilibrium among the various elements that make up each webpage.

Typography & Web Copy:

• Use clean and easy to read fonts
• Keep the copy clean, simple and to the point
• Make text BOLD if you want to draw more attention
• As with webpage layouts, spacing should be evenly distributed
• White text on a Black layout is harder to read then Black text on a White layout
• Choose a main textual color and stay consistent through the website

The most important design consideration is that your website be easy to read and easy to interpret. Following good typographic and copywriting principles will increase the readability of any website. Remember, people don’t read one word at a time. Instead, they scan lines of text, reading three or four words at a glance. The type you choose should make it easy for the eye to move smoothly through the text.

Good typography and copywriting also helps organize your website by signaling levels of contentand hierarchy of information. And it helps convey meaning by telling your reader which words are most important.

For more information about typography and web copywriting, please visit the services offered by The Revive Team. We want you to stay informed!

The Revive Team / 919.802.0424 / Contact Us Today!