Tips And Advices
1. Be consistent.
This means, keep the same "look and feel" across ALL of your pages. If a
user goes from one page that's white with a flowery background, to another
page that's got a red brick wall for a background, they're likely to think
they've either gone to another website, or that the site designer was
insane.
2. Use consistent navigation site-wide.
Have links on every page of your site, that at the very least link back to
your homepage. You might also want to include links for things like
"search", "help", "feedback", etc. A good place for these links is in a
line at the bottom of each page (this is how I do it). You could also have
them at the top of the page, or on the side of the page (if your site uses
tables or frames), but they must be there, and they must consistently be
in the same place on every page.
3. Don't use frames, and don't add links that cause a new browser window
to open.
Frames are still disliked; users can't bookmark a page within a framed
site, nor can they print a page within frames. And I can't think of
anything more annoying that the insta-browser-window.
4. Don't design pages with graphics or tables that are wider than 500
pixels.
I see this a lot from people who design on PC's. Perhaps they don't
realize that the Mac browser window (as well as WebTV browsers, and anyone
with a 14" or smaller screen size) does not open to "full screen" width -
500 pixels is as wide as it goes (or in the case of Macs, it's the default
width, and many people will never change from the default). If you design
wider, not only are you forcing users to scroll down, but now you're also
forcing them to scroll from side to side to see your entire page.
5. Get On With It!
Make your point in the top of the page, the "front screen". While users
are getting better about scrolling down, if you waste their first 15
seconds of viewing time on your site with Big Graphics Syndrome, or banner
ads, or trivial fluff, you may have just lost a viewer. They'll move on to
the next site without even reading the rest of your page.
6. Skip the huge graphics and animations.
I see this a lot, especially on corporate sites: Big Graphics Syndrome.
You know the kind, the one with a huge 500x300 jpeg that takes 2 minutes
to load over a modem. During that time many users have already clicked
"stop" and gone away. Design your page to be small - a good rule of thumb
is under 100K including text and graphics. This doesn't mean you have to
use NO graphics, it just means you should choose carefully; use graphics
that are attractive and enhance your site, without bludgeoning the user or
forcing them to wait 5 minutes for your page to finish loading. The same
goes for animations. Animated gifs were cute the first time, but now
they're just plain annoying.
7. Enhance, don't replace.
Site redesigns are nice and all, but not when you do it every week. Users
get annoyed when they bookmark a page, then return a month later to find
you've removed the page. If you MUST move a page, replace it with a link
to the new location. If you've removed it entirely, be sure your site's
Error Document allows the user to click back to your homepage (or your
search page).
8. Image Etiquette: use ALT tags, and HEIGHT and WIDTH tags.
Alt tags lets users see what you meant when they can't or don't load the
image. And height/width tags allow the rest of the page (especially the
TEXT, which is what people really want) to load first. Users will perceive
that your page loads faster, because they can start reading while the
images continue loading.
9. Don't use dark backgrounds, and don't change the colors of navigational
links.
If you use dark backgrounds with white text, users won't be able to print
your page. And changing the link colors is like changing the colors on a
traffic light. What would you think if the city planners went around and
swapped the green and red lights? Or changed red to blue, and green to
magenta? You'd be a bit confused, right? Your web visitors will be
similarly confused by such changes to the link colors.
10. Give every page a relevant (but not overly long) page title.
If someone bookmarks the page, the title is what shows up in their
bookmark file. The title is also what people see in their history file. If
you just call it "Home Page", this will be completely meaningless to
people, since they won't know WHOSE home page it is.
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