It’s funny to browse the internet, and find how many sites don’t follow the core rules of ‘good’ design. It’s staggering to think of how much wasted space is truly out there. You don’t want to be part of that wasted space, so be sure to follow these core rules of design.

There’s seven mistakes in all, hopefully they help you as you go forward with your website.

- Stop with the overuse of ads. Everyone knows that the reason most people own a website is to make money. Having this mindset exclusively is actually counter-intuitive to the desired outcome. If you start a site with this premise and litter home page with ads, you can basically kiss your money making dreams goodbye. The only way to turn profit is make it about your content, and your ads second.

- Just like ads, having a wide array of plug-ins can really drive down repeated viewership. A good rule to live by is to use one plug-in per page. The reason is that when a viewer comes to your site and can’t view the content they’re going to leave. Plug-in or no. Having more than one plug-in just exacerbates the situation even further.

- Flash intros are a big no-no. Unless you’re site is about something like an upcoming movie or video game.

- If location, location, location is the prime factor in real estate then navigation is the same for web design. 80% of your time should be making sure your site is easy to navigate. If a person can’t traverse the content on your site, they’re going to leave. Simple as that.

- Make all your links, even outbound ones visible to the user. This is kind of the same thing as navigation, but with a more focused purpose. Your links are really the most important text on your page. The two rules of link building is making sure they’re distinct and visible. Also, make all links navigating away from your site open in a new window.

- Define communication links. If you’re posting links that take you to something like your Facebook profile, email, make sure that you you let your users know.

- Use web friendly fonts, and try to stay away from crazy image based fonts. The only time you really need to use fonts in images are in your header, and maybe some buttons.

One aspect of your website that should be top priority is checking to see if it can load in a variety of resolutions. You’ll want to design your site so that it fits all monitor resolutions. Because nothing makes a potential visitor leave faster, than to see a site that is beyond navigation.

So, the question is…How can you make sure your site will load up on all resolutions?

First, you need to find a minimum resolution as your starting point. Here is a list of the different monitor resolutions as of now. A good starting point is the 800×600, as it’s still widely used.

When you’ve found your lowest resolution; this will be the res that you’ll want to design your site on. Depending on your monitor it can be a hindrance to work on real low resolutions. It is key however to do it this way though.

When you’re ready to start writing up your HTML, there’s one important key thing to remember. Always work with percentages not pixels. Specifically with the tables that are encompassing most of your site. The reason for this is that when you assign a measurement to a pixel size, it’s absolute. This isn’t good because as different resolutions are being used, the pixel amount appears differently on screen. Think of how different sized wallpapers look on your monitor.

With percentage based measurement, you’re getting a relative measurement. This works better because your site is loading based on a percentage of space. So, the basics of your site stay intact and don’t look out of place.

As you get deeper into your cells, the percentage rule gets less important. In fact the cell you use for your content won’t really need measurements hardly at all. If you do use measurements, just be sure it’s with percentages, not pixels.

If you’re looking for a simple tutorial about creating a website using Adobe Photoshop, and Dreamweaver check out these vids. They’re short and sweet, while being funny. Pay attention to some of the menus, and places that are explored throughout the tutorial.’

The world of website design has seen various changes through the years. Easily, the biggest shift in design came when SEO started to really take a foothold. Web sites became more about content and advancing on search engines then the designs themselves. Designers had to learn a whole new ball game. Through the years I think this has brough about a good change.

In the beginning, SEO experts and designers clashed over what was important when constructing a site. Less images, more links was the way to healthy SEO. This of course left designers with limited options in design. Things became more simple, and the layouts changed.

This day and age, I think we’ve reached a healthy medium. SEO standards have gotten better, and images aren’t the bane of SEO like they once were. I think design has improved because of SEO for a couple of reason. First, sites aren’t nearly as much of a time sink as they once were. Design is more about navigation, and interface than standing out with amazing images and color structure.

Like many great things in the world, some like to take advantage and blow things out of proportion. The greatest example in the web design, and online world can be found with SEO. You’ll generally find most of the mistakes I’m about to list with those just starting out with SEO.

If you happen to be a beginner, then take heed of these tips…hopefully you won’t begin a pattern that will end up hurting your website more than helping it.

– Don’t over saturate your writing with keywords. I know that you want people  to visit your site when they Google ‘North Carolina real estate’. That doesn’t mean that you need to keep typing that into your content. If your site is blog related, you have to really mind this rule. An important rule to remember is that Google requires a maximum of 2% for keywords in your content, with Yahoo liking around 5%

– Just as important as pleasing the search engines, is pleasing your users. So, you might only have to have 2% keyword density but you have to make sure that 2% is naturally being used. Because you can gain all the page views in the world, but your money will be made by conversion. People only want to view your content, and click through your site if it’s readable and interesting.

Make sure your website scales well: So, you’ve worked tirelessly on your website and it’s finally finished. Everything looks great, that is until you let your friend look at it on his/her monitor.  Then everything goes to hell. Unfortunately making your site scale to all monitors, and monitor configurations perfectly is impossible. But you can always make it better.

First, try and keep your width to 800 or less. Rarely, do sites even need to be wider than that anyway. But just a friendly reminder, as people don’t mind scrolling up and down as much as they do side-to-side. Your code can greatly help this problem as well.

The more browser testing, the better: If you used Dreamweaver as your design program, then you can never have too many browsers in your test list. In fact, there really isn’t a negative to have more browsers. Unless you think it’s going to take you along time to test all of them. But the time is worth it to make sure your site is compatible no matter what browser someone is using.

Ok, so you look around the internet and see all of these cool menus with effects attached to it. I’m guessing you immediately think that it’s Flash, but more than likely it isn’t. There’s a code base that if utilized to its full extent can provide you with some pretty cool features to add to your site.

The latest example that I created was for a site called PS3Trophies.co.uk. If you browse around the interactive menu on the top of the screen, this gives you an idea of what JQuery can do.  If you look at the core of JQuery, you’ll find some pretty complex code.  Luckily, you don’t have to deal with most of it. In fact if you find a good tutorial, or find someone who doesn’t mind sharing you can create something in JQuery very easily.

A good start is to visit jquery.com. Here you’ll find some tutorials, tips, and more about what the JQuery script can do. Once you have the code you need, the rest is just adjusting your CSS, and HTML.

Has anyone used JQuery for their sites? If so, have you found it simple to use with tutorials?

Compress, Compress, Compress: When you’re adding images to your website, you need to keep one thing in mind. The size of your site should be treated like an inventory, or budget. You only have a certain amount of space to use, as you don’t want your site to become too large from a file size point of view. If an individual page is taking 8-10 seconds to load on a broadband connection, then it’s too big.

If you did take an inventory of your site, you’d see that images is what bogs things down for you. To stop this from happening, you need to decrease your image’s file size as much as possible. The best program to do this in is Photoshop. When you export an image, you’re given options that can greatly help decrease an image’s file size. You can save it in a certain format that provides smaller sizes, or decrease the quality.

Flash can be your friend, but on in certain situations: When web designers caught on to everything that Flash was capable of, there was a huge revolution for the program. Animated, and stylized menus that could play embedded movies and the list goes on. The only problem is that while people love style, they love speed more so.  When deciding on whether to use Flash or not,
ask yourself one question…

Is my site content based, or artistically based?

If the function of the site you’re creating is about informing your visitors, or selling your content then leave Flash alone. Or if you do use it, make it minimal. Your wanting people to access your site faster so the content of your site draws them in.

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” - Pablo Picasso

Picasso’s quote is a simple one,  but one that is a complex problem that is becomes more difficult to solve as we grow older. As the world unfolds before our eyes, so does the wonder and majesty of what’s around us. Once the magic is gone, you’ll find that it’s harder to think outside of the box.

If you’re involved in web design, it’s important that you keep that ‘outside the box’ mentality. Creativity is one of the essential skill sets you’ll need as you grow in your design. It can be hard though. You’re more than likely juggling finances, your site’s SEO, research. It can be overwhelming to try and be creative with so much mental baggage going on.

Unlike most aspects of web design, creativity can be the hardest or easiest problem to tackle. Most of it depends on how much time you’re willing to dedicate to the creative process. The next step being what are you doing to help the creative juices flow.

Getting the creative side of your mind going isn’t like the intellectual portion. You can’t just exercise your brain and make it become creative. There’s almost an invisible force that’s at work when one is hit with a creative idea. The overall key to getting yourself ready is to free your mind.

Try meditating, or if the silence makes your think even harder try and play with your kids. If you don’t have kids then get lost in an activity where your mind is free to wander. One exercise that helps me is to open up Photoshop and just create something. I make myself not to think of anything in particular and let the tools, and brushes speak for themselves.

Next time you come across the need for a creative idea, don’t force it. Let your mind be nurtured, and I’ll gurantee you’ll be happy with the outcome.

What is SEO? That is a question you’ll be wanting to answer if you want to generate some traffic to your site.

This is a video from a SEO expert, who has some valuable information on to greatly enhance the quality of the SEO on your site: