A sexy site = sexy visitors = sexy money! I make a living as a graphic and web designer (see my portfolio)and I get excited about good design. Lately, I’ve been coming across some pretty sad looking blogs and want to share with you some key tips to avoid ugly site design and poor function.

1. Easy to Read - There should be good contrast between the text and background. Choose a color scheme that is attractive and avoid dizzying background patterns and images that are distracting. Break up large amounts of copy with pull quotes, photos and subheads. Advertising banners and text ads should be integrated with your design and unobtrusive. When visitors end up on a site that features more ads than content, that site becomes more frustrating than informational. It’s kind of like going to a car dealer and having to try and avoid the salesman so you can check out the cars.

2. Easy to Navigate - If I go to a website and can’t find a “home” or “contact” link I get frustrated and usually just close my window. Make sure that your menu is easy to find and has ALT tags so it can be viewed on all browsers and by visually impaired people. Check for dead / broken links.

3. Easy on the Eyes - Make sure to test your site for browser and resolution compatibility. In your big fancy 1280×1024 monitor your site may look fine but could be a horrible mess of scroll bars for those still browsing with the prehistoric 800 x 600 screens. I recommend using a liquid CSS layout that will easily adapt to all sizes, making your layout consistent.

4. Easy to Download - I think this problem was more severe years ago when we all so fascinated with cool animations, splashy background images and slow loading flash intros. As we all know, studies have shown that visitors generally click away from your site if your content doesn’t load in 10 seconds or less so make sure that your images are optimized for the web (72 dpi) using an image editing program like photoshop or an online optimizer.

5. Easy to Love - Do YOU love your site design? A solid design should draw visitors in with immediate visual content that is consistent and pleasing. If you’re not loving your design, then your visitors probably aren’t either. If YOU look good, you and your visitors will FEEL good