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Communication
491-02
Top Ten Sins
of Web Design |
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Top 10 Sins of Web Design
Too many Web sites bore, annoy and turn
away visitors who might otherwise have become loyal customers.
Make sure your web site isn't guilty of these all too common cyberspace blunders
. . . .
A website needs to work. Ninety percent
of websites are poorly designed and difficult to use. Website designers make
all kinds of mistakes. The biggest mistake is simple egotism. Web designers
believe they and their sites are important. They are NOT! Just because those
involved in a web project care about it doesn’t mean surfers will. It is not
what you think about your website, but what your users think about it.
When surfers arrive at a page on a site, do they quickly find what they want?
The most important thing designers can do to make the web a user-friendlier
place is test their sites with real people. Have someone else review your site
for you.
The goal of design is to bring order out of chaos. The designer’s role is to
assemble a pleasing, coherent whole out of a series of text and visual
elements. Designers who create Web sites also must design the user interface
--- how the user interacts with the site.
Information Architecture
- Observe many sites --- decide what
you like and why you like it.
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- Chunk the content --- make it as
easy as possible for a user to scan the site’s
content. Provide subheads. Use white space to separate chunks of
information.
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- Design for speed --- avoid large,
slow-loading graphics and animation. Use clickable thumbnails whenever
possible, so only those who want to see a visual or experience a special
effect will have to wait for it to download. Be sure to optimize graphics
for fast downloads.
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- Follow accepted standards ---
don't confuse visitors by using nonstandard colors for hyperlinks and
visited sites.
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- Avoid unnecessary graphics --- use
graphics only that communicate idea
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- Design for easy reading --- use
color and backgrounds that do not distract from the information.
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- Design for universal access and
for the lowest common denominator -- Assume a signifcant number visitors may
not have broadband. slow Internet connection.
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- Keep visitors informed --- Make it
easy for a user to identify the current page location. Users like to feel in
control of their surfing. Provide navigational buttons to others sections in
the site. Always provide a button to get Home or to other sections if there
are many pages involved.
- Design for printing --- avoid
nonstandard page size and text, and background colors that do not look good
when printed in black and white.
It is more difficult to read from a
computer screen than from paper. For in-depth sites, provide links to
additional pages, using headings and subheadings.
Typographic Guidelines
- Users can set defaults in their
browsers that control the way most text looks on a web page. Every browser
application has a default typeface and size set when it is installed. If you
want special effects, like shadow, color etc., you may want to create your
text as a graphic.
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- Italic, script, or all-caps should
only be used to emphasize certain words.
- Don't set test in lines that are
to long. Short paragraphs are best.
However, avoid too many short lines of text.
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- Use underlines for a reason --- to
show the viewer that the section of text links to something else on the site
or elsewhere on the web. An underline is universally recognized.
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- Use color with care, both for type
and for the pages’ background. Black type on a white background is easiest
to read, but generally any dark color on white is fine. White text on a dark
background may work well, but generally, reversed type appears smaller.
Contrast is the key.
