It's great to have a website but everyone and their dog has one nowadays. So you need to have a differentiating factor that helps your site stand out from the others. We've listed some essential design elements that should help you to create the something extra to help your website standout from the crowd.

Speed

Nowadays everyone wants instant gratification. So if your website is too slow, people will leave before the graphics finish loading. Nobody likes a slow site. Because of this, it pays to look at ways to increase the speed of your website.

• Optimize your graphics and code. Make your files as small as possible and use utilities to eliminate extra data from your html files. Use them on every page on your website.
• Reuse graphics. Using a different graphic might make the site look a little nicer, but the existing graphic has usually already been loaded and is still in the user's cache so it will take less time to load. The only thing your browser had to download was the html.
• Ensure your server can handle your traffic. If your website is getting 150,000 hits a month and your server can handle only 50,000 then your website will run very slowly no matter how much optimizing you do. If this happens move to a bigger server immediately - to one that can handle 150,000 hits a month plus growth. There are plenty of utilities out there that test server speed.

Usefulness

There are basically 3 categories of websites that help you to be more effective and maintain your clientele. If your website doesn't fall into one of these categories then you really need to question what are you creating it for.

• Informative websites that offer information, resources and educational materials about an industry, service, trade or product.
• Service Oriented websites that offer a service (search engine, downloads, auction, etc.), sell a product, or advertise a company.
• Entertaining websites that provide fun! These are normally multimedia websites.

Personality

It's always an idea to liven up a website. Here are 3 things to bear in mind to help create personality

• Humor is always refreshing so you would be advised to find a way of introducing a little somewhere in your website.
• Color is another way to have your website stand out. Don't be afraid to use color but keep within a small palette and avoid contrasting colors too much. Color can be tricky so seek the advice of a graphic designer.
• Using graphics and animation always improves the look but keep in mind the theme you are going for. Unrelated graphics, especially where there are a lot of them, can give a disjointed feel. As long as you stay within a theme and color scheme it should work.

Service

Service is as important to a website as it is to a business. Your website is a business portal so treat it as another aspect of your business. Pay attention to correspondence from your website visitors and their feedback.

Mind you, that's hard to do unless you provide that mechanism to allow feedback. Encourage users to leave you a comment about the site, whether good or bad. Then allow time to check their feedback and take action on it. Alsways respond thatnking them for their feedback within a specified timeframe... the sooner the better. It's good business practice and sense!

Clarity

When designing a website, we stand by the KISS principle... Keep It Simple Stupid.

• Use words when you need to only.... have your message simple and clear - be direct and to the point. Don't beat around the bush.
• Have simple one word menus using alt text for descriptions. The menu should be clear and concise.
• Avoid a large color palette with multiple contrasting colors. This tends to be confusing to the eye.
• Keep links in one place, or duplicate text links at the bottom of your page for non-text browsers. Keep your links to the left, right, or top of your page, and content in the middle. If it doesn't seem like there's enough space to include a link you want, either make the space or lose the link.
• Leave plenty of white space. Too many images and text together will confuse the user. Leave space in between. White space will direct the eye where it needs to go. Nobody likes 'busy' web pages.

Organization and Administration

Organization... it's really important and can help you in so many ways when it comes to updating and maintaining your website. If you've done the planning then you will have some documentation about what your website will look like. You will want to also create documentation as to the actual file structure of your website and keep a folder with all this information so that you can refer to it.

Refer to the diagram below... the site map.

Let's talk about different file types for your website...
Create as many directories and subdirectories as you have different file types. For example, one for images; one for template files such as headers, footers and css files; and then for one each for Products, Services, Specials, About Us and finally Contact Us. Within each of these directories create a folder for current, old and underdevelopment - this way you can keep track of where you've been, what is current and where you are going. You don't want to get these files mixed up! And you don't want to write one over the other.

Once you start letting go of your site, so will your users. Make sure you keep your site updated. Look at your content... is anything no longer relevant or in need of updating. To help with that, give yourself a goal or schedule to keep to ensuring that the website is updated. the organization of your site will make it easier to update it.

Sites that are not regularly updated lose traffic as there is nothing there that keep users returning.