So you want to have the best website possible, right? Then you need to understand the basic concepts of website design. Unless your website is simply for fun - or a hobby site - you want to entice your visitors to do something while they are surfing through your pages. Good website design will lay out your site so that it is easy to navigate through, is attractive, and provides you with functionality. In order to help you get your website up and running with the best possible results, you need to understand the concepts behind good website design.

The first key to a productive website is understanding the content that you include in the website. You want to make sure the information you use is reliable and accurate. If you are promoting a product or a business, you need to ensure that it is reputable and that all of your facts are right. You need to make sure that your website is presented as a credible source of information or else your visitors will go find the information somewhere else. Additionally, good website design includes making sure that the text is spelled properly and the grammar is correct. Misspelled words and improper grammar will make your visitors run away.

The next key to website design is making sure your website is compatible with the most popular and most widely used web browsers used today. In order to do that you need use text, graphics, and effects that are recognized and supported by these browsers. If you do not, then your website will not display properly for your visitors and that is another reason why they will move on to someone else's website. Always make sure that your website displays properly in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Netscape - yes, there are still some people using this browser - and, of course, Microsoft Internet Explorer. Always view your website in these platforms before letting it go live to make sure your HTML coding is correct.

What other things do you need to know about good website design? Graphics and photos in your website are great, but unless they have been optimized to a small size without sacrificing the quality of the picture, they are detrimental to your site and not an asset. Not everyone has switched over to broadband or DSL and they are still using dial up to access the Internet. Photos and graphics take time to load, and if yours takes longer than 10 seconds to load then you could lose a visitor. Keep the pictures small and to a minimum, and always use an ALT HTML tag that allows people to turn off the graphics if they need to.

The same goes for background colours, multimedia, frames, and links. A good website design uses colours that all browsers can read. Multimedia - such as flash movies, video clips, and background music - should come with the ability to start and stop as the visitor sees fit, or if they are flash components, visitors should have the option to skip them. Frames are not always supported by your visitor's web browser version, making them frustrating to view. Does this mean that you shouldn't include these items? No. It just means that a good website design will limit how they are used. Only you can decide whether or not these items are integral to your website.

The last key to a good website design is making sure that all of the links you use throughout your site should work and not be broken. You will need to check them every so often to make sure they work and update them as needed. If you follow these suggestions for a good website design, then your website will be the best it can be.