You don't have to have a degree in art to design effective, clean, easy-to-use sites. However, you do need some common sense and a few pointers. Usually, even the ugliest, confusing sites can be redesigned easily using the steps below.

1. The Lowest Common Denominator
Not math! Not really. The lowest common denominator in web design simply means that media designed for the web community must be designed to look good on every visitor's system regardless of the system resolution and the browser version.

When we refer to system resolution, we are talking about proportions: 640 x 480, 800 x 600, etc. Most users today are using 800 x 600 resolution but if you design for them, the folks at 640 x 480 are not going to be able to view your full design. I feel an example coming on.

This page at 640 x 480 resolution

This example makes it painfully obvious that this site was not designed for the lowest common denominator. Vistors to this site would have to do a lot of scrolling around to read these articles. Their experience wouldn't be that great. The navigation is hidden and chances are, the viitor won't even give the article a chance.

Let's look at this page at 800 x 600 which is the average resolution these days according to the latest statistics.

This page at 800 x 600 resolution

Oh, that's much better. The vistor using the most common resolution, 800 x600, can easily view the entire navigation bar and while they will still have to scroll down to read the article, they have an idea of what the page is about.

The browser a vitor is using to see your site makes a difference in the lowest common denominator as well. Look at the example above. Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows adds alot of screen real estate with the menu bars, favorites bar and using Yahoo Messanger adds another bar beneath that. To be safe for 800 x 600 resolution, we recommend 760 pixels wide. Click here for browser statistics.