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So you've decided to put up your first website- congratulations. Before you start doing some easy website design, though, you should be aware of the design no-nos. There are a lot of elements out there that you may be tempted to put in, but these will make your site visually unappealing for visitors. And if your site is visually uninteresting, then your visitors will be less inclined to stay and see what's inside.

1.Scrolling text and cartoon GIFs. In the 1990s, these were a novelty, but the appeal quickly wore off. If you want your visitors to take you seriously, lose those GIFs. Along with scrolling text, these animations make your site look old and clunky, and will only serve to distract users.

2.Excessively large fonts and bad font colors. Setting your fonts against a badly-chosen colored background -- like neon green in a white box -- may make your text unreadable. Don't try to make up for it by putting huge letters, which, again, just serve as distractions. Just use contrasting, tasteful colors - stick to around 12 points of Arial or Verdana, as these fonts are the most easily recognized by all browsers.

3.Very large image sizes. You want your users to be able to load your pages quickly. Slow-loading pages are a big turn-off for today's visitor""keeping them waiting for more than a few seconds make may them lose patience and just go to another, faster-loading site. Make your file sizes smaller. Keep your image file size to about 50KB per photo for medium-sized images. There are many free graphics programs you can find online to help you with easy website design.

4.Excessively lengthy blocks of text. If you put in text blocks that are too big, they quickly become hard to read. Text must be put in columns, and not all the way from the left to the right. Columns are used by magazines and newspapers, too, because it makes it easier for readers to keep their place while reading. But don't take that to mean that very long columns are acceptable. Columns that go longer than one screens' worth of space (about 768 pixels on the majority of monitors today) should be divided, and the excess content moved to another page.

These are just some things to avoid. The Golden Rule for easy website design is: design for your intended visitors. Don't put animations because you think animated GIFs look cool. Put yourself in the shoes of your user. The page that attracts users is attractive, well thought-out in presentation, and fast-loading. Because your average visitor has other pages to look at, you want him to stay a bit longer, look around, and hear what you want to say.

As most web users today are exposed to hundreds, if you thousands of different pages, you want their surfing experience on your site to be a good one. When designing, avoid components that will only distract visitors, like GIF animations. Make your text easy to read by using highly-visible colors and sizes, and use columns to keep it organized. To facilitate faster loading times, compress image sizes. Easy website design revolves around designing according to the visitor's needs, so you have to learn to appreciate your design like a potential visitor would.