Common Sense Web Design Tips
First Impressions
- First impressions last and you only have a few seconds to make a good one
- The look is usually the first thing people notice and it sets the atmosphere
- The content should reinforce the atmosphere and give value
- For value read: engaging, informative, entertaining, controversial, personal
Purpose is your raison de etre
- What you do is the first question people normally ask after meeting you
- How you reply often determines who your future friends and aquaintances will be
- Tell them about your professional and personal interests
- Make it obvious that you know your field and like what you do
Content is king
- News and Technology moves so quickly that todays news will be irrelevant a weeks time
- Timeless content is far more valuable than something that will be dead in 6 months time
- Original content is better because it is hard for others to compete with
Blogs and Personal Sites
- You are free to write in your own voice and say what you like
- This also means you have a lot of rope with which to hang yourself
- Visitors like a conversational writing style on blogs and it makes them feel included
- Be happy in your purpose and let others see that you are happy
- Be genuine
- Be nice :-)
Business Web Sites
- Your intent should be clear from the start
- If you are selling something then sell it properly
- Make it simple for people to do business with you
- Give them tools to easily browse your site and purchase products and services
- Create a professional image by offering plenty of information about you, your product/service warranties, shipping policies, privacy policy etc.
- All these little details build a sense of security when people shop online
Teach and Educate
- People want your experience and knowledge to help them make decisions
- People also want to learn how to do the things you can do
- Provide them with articles, how-tos, instructions, examples and resources
Share Information
- Subscribe to forums and news feeds of interest
- Expand on what you learn and turn it into more useful information
- Write authorative articles backed up with good sources and references
- Reccommend books and literature to point the reader in directions that will improve their education and maybe even their life
Interaction
- Site interaction is far more interesting when visitors find it simple to get around
- Well designed navigation systems put users in control and makes for a better experience
- Even a search box which takes up little space provides a lot of great functionality
- Lengthy web pages can be split using a paging system or accordion menu
- People love to communicate so make it easy for them
- You can easily do this using blogs and Social Media such as Facebook and Flickr
Speed
- Slow sites frustrate visitors and force them to leave
- Think twice before adding fancy flash effects because it may slow things down for your visitors
- Search engines cant read flash files anyway so that is another reason to avoid them
- Large graphics slow page loading times and should first be optimised for web use
Footnote
The above list is not exhaustive and barely scratches the surface. These tips are plain common sense and universal in the world of web site design but it amazing how many web sites still get the basics wrong. Interestingly usability guru Jakob Nilesen has found that 70% of web users pay most attention to the left hand side of a page yet so many sites put all the action towards the right. It is all these little details which go into creating effective user interfaces for a web site. As the man himself says it is more profitable to stick to convention
Resources
Jakob Nielsen's Alert box: horizontal attention means left
