What constitutes a good web design?

Introduction
Each website has a target spectrum of visitors who are specifically looking forward to some topic. Thus, each website is designed with features depending on the requirement your visitors. So, what features encompass a good web design? To ensure that the website is built to serve the visitor and enhance their experience of navigating through the website, it is essentially important to avoid bad web design features and engineer the good ones within the design. This practice will certainly help design a website that is appealing, purpose-oriented as well as user friendly.

The key to a good web design are:

A simple layout with even simpler pages that are presented in a straightforward manner from the top to the bottom of each and every page thus enhancing the users experience.

A website designed to have centered orientation. This means that the website will have its content and layout centered to make it visible on the first sight such that there is no need to scroll or navigate too much throughout the website.

Content that is precisely designed to look good rather than the website looking better. The subject of the website is most important as it communicates for the website owner.

Soft, stylish and neutral backgrounds that make the website look smart and sober. Plenty of Whitespace or empty spaces often add up the look and feel of the design.

3D effects, cute icons and strong colors used sparingly to draw attention on the content posted on the web pages.

Placing big text wherever required.

Here is a list of good web design features:

General Design:
All the web pages must fit within a space of 640 x 480 pixels. 640 x 480 was the default monitor and desktop. Most people nowadays use 800 x 600 as their default. Websites must look presentable with appropriate use and placing of photos, subheads, pull quotes as well as other graphic elements. A website should suit the purpose for which it is made and the page style, themes, etc should remain the same throughout the website. The rule of the thumb is websites must load quickly. If the website takes too much time to load, then it is counted as a serious bad feature which discourages users from visiting the website.

Content:
It is important to see to it that the background color does not interrupt the readability of the content and the sequence of information is presented in the correct manner. The font, font color and font size are friendly to the reader. One of the recent features is, publishing content in the center of the page. Web pages that include paragraphs of web content in all caps/bold/italic/underlined/all-at-once are seriously considered to be a bad feature.

Navigation:
Each website has its own navigation theme which should be reflected throughout the website. The Navigation bars and buttons should be designed in such a manner that they are visible at first sight and enhance the users experience of navigating the website. If a website has a lot of complicated frames embedded within it, then users will have to unnecessarily keep scrolling twice, thrice or even more.

Links:
Originally, search engines give more important to websites that have hundreds of links embedded within it. Underlined links with a color different from the simple text and background color make it easy for the user to understand that it is a link. The link codes must always remain live while at the same time, the links within the background pages must always be visible to the user. Dead links constitute a bad design.

Graphics:
Websites must have graphics with an ALT label and every graphic links should have a similar text link. Preferably, it is advisable to use small buttons. Websites must use graphics that load fast. Large graphic files would take a long time to load if the user is using a slow Internet connection. Browser-safe colors must be used within the graphics as well as backgrounds. Too many graphics or animated graphics count as a bad feature and should avoided.

Thus, effectively embedding some of the above features into your website design will enhance the users experience and help create a "brand value" for your website.