You need to pay attention to ensure every minute detail in your website design is observed to ensure peak performance of your site. Most amateurs and professional webmasters belief that the more visual and audio aids they use on their website, which means slower loading time, the better it is for the visitor, when it isn’t so.

To help you remember the rules for effective website design, here are five basic rules.

1) Do not come up with an excuse to use a splash page

The first pages of a website that consists of dazzling fancy displays are the splash pages. Made up of pretty designs, they are usually lavish images and graphics with accompanying words such as ‘welcome to our site’ or ‘click here to enter’. They are pages with no purpose, and serves to discourage uses from fully utilizing the actual purpose of the website due to their slow loading time. Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Banner advertisements should be kept to a minimum

These are usually large adverts placed at the top of the web page but can also be at the bottom too. Blatant ads such as banners tend to be regarded as being less credible and it is a total waste of website space Web surfers tend to ignore such banner ads so adding them would only mean a waste of virtual real estate space. A better solution would be to add useful web contents and weave affiliate links artfully into them.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

Navigation must be simple so that even a small child can use. Do not use any form of menus that will complicate users, drop downs and multi-tiers are not a good idea. When navigation becomes hard and frustrating, they will leave your site for good and you will probably never get them back. A site map will help them find what they want and should be factored in to the website design right from the start.

4) There should be a clear indicator showing where the user is currently on the website

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. When each link that has been visited is marked in some way form the ones that are fresh, visitors can easily know which is fresh and which is fresh and which is not. Never confuse your visitors because you will lose them very quickly as they become frustrated.

5) Avoid using audio on your site

Your favorite tune may be repulsive to some visitors, so use music sparingly. If sound is used, do not let it play over and over again. Using audios may not always be a good idea, if you have to include them be sure to allow for some form of user control such as volume or muting ability. By applying all these website design tips we share, you can expect to reap long term benefits from continuous traffic from returning visitors to your website.