Visual Web Design

The combination of colors you choose to use on your site is essential to its visual appeal. An unpleasing or awkward mix of colors not only looks bad, it can distract users and reflect poorly on the credibility of the site.

A great colour scheme can help you to achieve the the highest quality look and feel when applied to your header, footer, navigation, body, and text.

The following from 1stwebdesigner lists 10 basic visual web design mistakes:

1. Bad Font Usage
2. No Images, Text Only - while having enough white space is important, there needs to be an adequate balance of your use of images and text throughout.
3. No Paragraph On Long Articles
4. Very Tiny Font Size
5. Heavy Flash Usage - too much can slow down your website
6. Body Text Above Colorful Background - It's never a good idea to attempt placing text (any color) over a colorful background.
7. Too Many Advertisements
8. Unwanted Pop Ups - This is a quick and easy way to lose visitors.
9. Too Long Articles
10. Link Colors Aren't Visible - Your link text colors should be a different color from your regular body text. An example would be a bright blue link in contrast to the black text.

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/basic-visual-web-design-mistakes/

Web Standards

Designing using Web standards requires adhering to the predetermined specifications and standards set by organizations such as WaSP & W3C.

Using web standards is beneficial for individuals who strive to give themselves (or clients) a professional appearance and reputation.

Web standards are important to web design for:

1. Maintainability
2. Usability
3. Clients
4. A quality design

From http://dustinbrewer.com/why-web-standards-are-important-in-web-design/

Information Architecture

As a high school student, one of my favorite memories of taking the SAT (there are very few) was the analogies section. I found them intriguing and I still see their relevancy and application to my life today. If you share the same sentiment, I'm certain you will appreciate the following in helping to explain the mystery of Information Architecture as it relates to creating websites.

Information architecture is to website as blueprint is to house.

In case this alone doesn't instantaneously bring back the memories of your test-taking days, I'll restate this in a manner that may look more familiar:

1.) IA : WEBSITE ::

(A) cat : dog

(B) book : library

(C) blueprint : house

(D) peninsula : continent

Did you instinctively reach for your #2 pencil to record the correct answer on your scantron sheet? Mission accomplished.

Considering this analogy should get you thinking about the similarities between IA and a blueprint, but let's discuss in more detail by continuing to compare a website and a house. When planning to build a house, one needs to consider:

1. Who will live in the house
2. How many inhabitants will there be
3. How will residents use the space
4. What are the residents' expectations

In the same way a builder asks these questions, an Information Architect must analyze:

1. Who are the website's users
2. How many will visit and utilize the website
3. What tasks do users need to accomplish (login, find info, purchase, etc.)
4. What are users' behaviors & what do they consider to be a logical flow of information

Creating the taxonomy (the practice and science of classification), interviewing users, building sitemaps, and using wireframes are just a few of the tasks IA's complete to design this "blueprint".

For those who may confuse Information Architecture with Web Design, the house example still serves as a relevant example in distinguishing between the two. IA deals with the blueprint of the "house" (website) while Web Design relates to picking the paint colors, fabrics, wall hangings and so forth. In other words, a website's background/font colors, text content, graphics, etc. are handled by the Web Designer.