Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a premier website development company that provides its clients with a range of web designing services along with internet promotion services. He has over 10 years of experience in catering to international clients.

5 Design Delusions That Can Take Toll On Your Website!

Plug-Ins Make Life Easier

Sure they do! But when your website totally relies on a plug-in, there is too much at stake. When you create a website entirely dependent on closed third party plug-ins, it can actually lead to serious backfire. Often people don’t have these plug-ins installed on their browsers and when they try to view your website, they would be only be irritated by the windows’ constant plea for installation. And more often than not, they just choose to leave instead of succumbing.

So try to stick to cross-browser, standards-compliant code and tools for your website that don’t require any additional work or installations from your visitors.

Reduce the Image File Size As Much As Can Be

It is always advisable to limit the file sizes on your website so as to enhance its usability and make web pages load faster. However, web designers often stretch this a bit to far and reduce image sizes so much that they appear ugly and jagged on the front end. While this may definitely reduce the weight of the website, the crappy look of images only serve to paint an unprofessional picture on the other end.

The decreasing number of dial-up internet users has pushed up the acceptable image sizes. So you don’t have to make things as small as can be lest it takes toll on the design appearance and reduce the apparent quality of your website. After you are done, make sure you preview your processed images on multiple monitors and negate any scope of distortion.

More Content = More Goodies

Content definitely is the king on the web. But that doesn’t mean you overload your website with information. Often designers, in a bid to serve more info to their audiences, tend to include too much content on a web page that it ends up creating a feeling of clutter and ruining the visual readability of the page.

They key is not to fill in disparate information on a single area of your web page. Even though there may be times when you need lots of content, make sure you pay attention to the organization. Place your content in a consistent and attractive manner so that visitors get all that they need to know without seeing a mess.

Variety is Nice!

It sure doesn’t hurt to provide your users with a variety of options but when it comes to design, its better to maintain a little consistency. It shouldn’t be the case, when visitors hop from one page to another, they shouldn’t feel they have landed on completely different terrain.

Users are more comfortable when they become familiar with the look and functioning of a website within a few seconds. If you present them with something drastically different every few pages, they would only be confused and have a less efficient experience. So practice consistency!

Ads Make Great Business Sense

While ads are a great source of revenue, often times they serve to detract visitors from your message and erodes on your professionalism. Littering web pages with ads can seriously bring down its aesthetic feel. Moreover, web users have come to ignore ads altogether so there is a huge question mark on their real effectiveness.

So, make sure you consider carefully before you place ads on your website!