This is the first proper post of our blog, so we will start at the very bottom with the basics of web design. There are many things you should and shouldn’t do when designing your website or blog. This post highlights a few of the basics that you should avoid doing on your site.

1. Don’t use background music, it is just annoying. If you want to put music on a page do it so the visitor has to click ‘play’.
2. Don’t have your home page as a splash page, this is very bad for SEO (search engine optimisation) and viewers can get confused or annoyed by them.
3. Don’t make your design so wide that visitors have to scroll across the page to read all the content.
4. Don’t use lots of contrasting colors, this often makes it look busy and is not pleasing on the eye.
5. Don’t use an image as your main background, this looks busy - keep it simple.
6. Don’t use a crazy font that is hard to read, it may look nice but the visitors need to read the text!
7. Don’t make hyperlinks the same color as the main text, make hyperlinks clear, preferably they should be underlined/bold/different color.

I have only touched on each point lightly, in the future I will expand on each point in more detail. In the mean time just take a quick look at your website and make sure you are not a culprit of any of the above!

For more reading check out this post of 19 Things Not To Do.

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