5 Web Design Steps That Everyone Should Follow

Think about all the websites you have ever seen - how many of them looked fantastic with a professional design and how many of them looked like an amateur with Photoshop did the majority of the work? When planning the next web design project for your company, there are a number of steps that you should follow to ensure that your finished website is as good as it can be.

1. Flashy pages make for unwanted distractions
   For some reason, many people feel the need to ask for flashy splash pages. Whilst they believe that these pages look good, the reality of the situation is that it actually gives visitors cause to pause and reconsider whether they want to continue on or not. These sorts of distractions can actually send visitors away, so steer clear.
2. Less is more with banner advertisements
   At the end of the day, a single banner advertisement is going to be more successful than a whole bunch of smaller advertisements in your web design. This will also make the space more appealing to advertisers (although, not selling valuable space on your website would definitely be the better solution).
3. The key to your website is navigation
   The most attractive web design in the world is going to be completely useless if no one can figure out how to use it. This is why navigation is one of the key areas of your website, and it should be something that you spend plenty of time looking into. Make sure that visitors can always find the home page and a way to contact you.
4. Never copy and paste your coding
   Some who work in web design try to save time by coping and pasting code from other websites, but this can actually cause all sorts of errors. Whilst writing the code from scratch will take longer (and often bump up the cost of the project), it is definitely the most preferable option.
5. Consistency is your way to success
   At the end of the day, your website needs to be kept consistent at all times and throughout all sections. All of the navigation links should be similar and should be located in the same place on each page; the colours should be pretty consistent across the board; and the layout should be similar and easy to follow on each page.

By following each of the above steps when undertaking an upcoming web design project, you can ensure that your website is as attractive and functional as you could have hoped for. By accidentally doing even one thing wrong in your plan, you could find that your design experiences all sorts of problems that are difficult to rectify.