Here are some quick guidelines to prevent you from falling into the usual traps of badly designed websites. Read through this list before creating a new site (or check it with the one you have) and maybe you'll end up with a better result.
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1. If you provide some kind of file download or anything that might take some time to download, do always state the file size. 2. No one really likes scrolling text, marquees and things like that. It's annoying, both for the viewer and the rest of the programs that share the processor time. 3. Most user's screen are 640 x 480, and they don't like to scroll, so make your page fit all kinds of resolutions. 4. Don't have extremely long pages, especially the front page. Not many people bother to scroll down to see what's further down, unless it's something they really need. 5. If you've got a lot of pictures on your page which are not part of the design (galleries, etc.), consider using thumbnails. With thumbnails the user has the option to choose which pictures he/she would like to view in full size. 6. Don't use too much italic or bold type, use only where it should be used. Regular text might be hard to read (especially small font sizes) when too much is in italic. 7. Never ever write regular text all in uppercase. It looks very unprofessional and it's ugly, though uppercase in headers may sometimes be necessary. 8. Consider your background color. The first step is not to use the standard grey one. White (or almost white) is usually best; black may look good if your design fits. 9. Check your code! Make sure there aren't any nested loops or any forgotten tags which aren't closed. 10. Be careful with frames as they make bookmarking impossible and don't allow a whole page to be printed in it's original look. If you don't need them, don't use them. 11. Test your pages with different browsers. Your super-mighty layout trick in Explorer might look like a transfer error in Netscape. 12. Don't use a textured background which has a similar color to the text, or a high contrast with the text. Not only does it make the site harder to read, it often looks like it doesn't really belong there, either. 13. If you change the color of visited and unvisited links, make sure they are the same color throughout the whole site (if you don't have a really, really good reason not to do so) to avoid confused web-users. 14. On every page, always have a date stating when the page was last updated. Most users like to know. 15. Reuse graphics such as banners and logotypes to make a more consistent site. It will also make the pages download faster due to the browsers cache. 16. Have your buttons really look like buttons; the user should not have to figure out what's a link and not. This doesn't mean you should ignore the next tip. 17. Don't always make your buttons beveled or 3D in some way. Most people are tired of Windows' looks. Try to do something new. 18. Always use the <ALT> tag. When page download is in progress the surfer has at least a clue what's going to show up. Also, people using browsers that don't support images (or those with the image-loading turned off) won't be totally lost. 19. Avoid big under-constructions banners. A website that is not under some kind of construction will soon be quite unvisited. 20. Always make your graphics as small as possible. This goes for the whole page. I repeat, do always try to get down the file size as much as possible. There are still people using 14.4 modems, you know. 21. If you have a lot of pages linked to each other, include a back or home button so the user always has the chance to get back immediately to the main index. 22. Never forget to include target="_top" an all outgoing links when using frames. 23.If you are not using a system which is limited to "8 dot 3" filenames, there is no excuse why you shouldn't use .html instead of .htm as the file extension. 24.Check your spelling and grammar, at least run an automatic spelling check. A web page with lots of spelling mistakes looks quite unprofessional (trust me on this one, I know what I'm talking about). |
