Website Maintenance - Design

Like everything else, fashions in website design come and go with surprising rapidity. Cast your mind back to the designs of yesteryear: new technology and design techniques are constantly being developed and becoming popular.

Build your site using CSS (cascading style sheets). In addition to its compliance with web standards, one of the main benefits of using CSS is that you can update the design of your site in a flash, without having to edit thousands of individual table cells or formatting tags.

Look at your competitors' websites. What designs are they using? Which do you think works best? There should be no shame in borrowing a few ideas from your most successful rivals!

Generally speaking, clean, uncluttered designs tend to look the most professional and are generally the most usable. If you don't have the time or budget to redesign your site once a year, timeless elegance will serve you much better than gimmicky animations or overuse of graphics.

Frequently reassess how easy-to-use your website is. Check that the navigation is clear and logical. If, with all the new content you're adding, you find your website rapidly expanding, make sure that your navigation can cope with the extra pages. Consider adding a site map, search box, and breadcrumb navigation, to make it easier for your visitors to find the information they need.